Clemson University

This week is being spent at Clemson University in South Carolina. Midway through the flight yesterday, I started to wonder why I do this to myself. I left Fairbanks at 1:30AM and arrived in Greenville at 6:30pm. This left a 50 mile drive to Clemson. This was when I started to look around I remember why I enjoy traveling. I love to visit new places. I'm here for the ESCC/Internet² Joint Tech meeting being held at a Madren Conference Center attached to Clemson University. We are separated from the campus by a golf course that is, surprising to me, isn't very green (the color not its environmental impact). The only negative so far is that food doesn't seem to be readily available near the conference center and what little there is seems be located on the far side of the university. I think they didn't want to impact their catering business for meetings held here. Today, there was an all-day tutorial

on MPLS. The meeting starts tomorrow morning until Wednesday at noon. After that, I'm one of the instructors for a hands-on IPv6 workshop that runs through Friday. IPv6 has been getting a bit of publicity lately since the last remaining blocks of IPv4 addresses are going to be allocated to the RIRs sometime this week. What this basically means is that once the RIRs have given out all of their allocation, there isn't anymore available through normal channels. This would limit the ability for new businesses, networks, ISPs, etc. to join the Internet. Here in the U.S. there hasn't been a lot of concern about this since the US based organizations own the majority of the IPv4 address space. The widget I just added to the left side of the page was developed by Hurricane Electric, an Internet and co-location business that has providing IPv6 connectivity for years.

Update Monday, 6:30 EST - The last unallocated /8s were allocated to APNIC today which only leaves the last 5. Each RIR will receive one of the last /8s. IANA no longer has anymore IPv4 addresses to hand out when an RIR runs out...

I was sitting in a meeting this evening and noticed that Apple needs to come here to make a commercial. In the two rows of people on the other side of the room (24 people), all but three of the laptops were Macbook Pros. Of the remaining 3, one was an iPad, one was a PC running Windows XP and the other a PC running Ubuntu. Kind of interesting.

There were a lot of inquiries into Alaska tourism since the next time this group meets will be next summer in Fairbanks. Meeting with the network engineer here in Clemson and looking into what they had to do to host this meeting. It looks like some people back in Fairbanks are going to be busy. He mentioned that hosting the meeting was a great way to ensure that you have your IT infrastructure is in order.

Moto related content - No update yet from Porter's Beemershop. I probably should give them a call sometime. Today, in Fairbanks, the local Airheads group is getting together to overhaul a couple of 38mm Bings. I have never taken my carbs apart so I'm kind of sorry to miss this particular tech day. On the other hand, my gas mileage has been running in the mid to high 40s so maybe I shouldn't mess with them. Other things on my maintenance list have not been started due to cool temperatures in the garage.

I guess I expected to see more bikes on the road as the high temperature was in the mid-70s.

Update Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - No more 70°F days...

This is the foggy view of the lake behind the hotel this morning. It has been raining continuously since before noon and others are finding their return flights cancelled.