Hans Cathcart’s Homepage

Before the day is out, I thought I owed it to my friends to explain what World IPv6 Day was, what IPv6 is, and its significance. Some of my former Eagle colleagues at The American University will remember me spending days and nights running Ethernet cable around the Eagle’s office ceilings, buying Ethernet connectors and “wiring-up” the office. Initially it was simply a way to speed up the old Apple LocalTalk network so that we could play NetTrek and Marathon, but the grand plan was to get the office network connected to the Internet and ultimately start publishing the student newspaper on the Web.

To some, this may have seemed like a computer geek’s crazed addiction, but it was the thing to do in the mid-nineties. My fellow IT-savvy friends Nanther, Jamie, John, Rushi and Todd helped confirm my instinct to get connected to this thing called the Internet. One of the setup steps when attaching all the computers to the network involved giving each machine a unique number. The protocol all computers connected to the Internet speak is called IP or the Internet Protocol. The first true release of this protocol was called version 4, or IPv4. And part of this protocol involved these unique IP addresses, which are the computer equivalent of ones telephone number, and they look like this “69.171.228.13″. That’s one of Facebook’s IP addresses, btw.

When our Internet-connected computers speak with one another, they typically each have a unique IP address, and all communication relies on the fact that the messages between the computers is properly routed. Should lots of computers start using other computer’s IP addresses, the Internet could stop to work properly. The numerical representation of these IP addresses allowed for nearly 256 times 256 times 256 times 256 unique numbers. That’s a 32-bit number with over 4 billion unique IPs. Plenty, right?

Well, what happened was that people started to actually use this Internet thing, and now, believe it or not, we’ve almost run out. With all the laptops and iPhones and Web servers out there, not to mention over 6 billion people, there’s just not enough uniqueness to go around. We’ve actually been close to running out for many years, but with various routing tricks we’ve extended the inevitable — the various IP devices in your home all share a single IP belonging to your router when speaking to the Internet.

Fortunately, this problem was predictable and as early as 1999 a new version of the Internet Protocol was introduced to replace IPv4, called… (no we skipped 5)… IPv6. Among some technical changes to the protocol, the most important aspect is that the total possible number of unique IP addresses in IPv6 is 128-bits, which is approximately 340 undecillion. That’s a lot!

The problem is, with IPv4 working just fine, how do we get everyone to switch. It turns out that we don’t have to switch just yet, but that over the next several years more and more systems will be able to speak both IPv4 and IPv6, and have the ability to choose which protocol to use in communication with other computers. Chances are your MacBook or Windows PC is already capable speaking this new protocol, and in fact prefers it, but is not able to since most of the Internet is still only on IPv4.

Today, that started to change. Many of the world’s most popular web sites, including Google and Facebook, as well as the US Federal Aviation Administration and my employer Akamai Technologies enabled their web sites to be accessible via both protocols. It is a 24 hour “test run”, after which things get changed back to normal and we all review what problems happened.

Did this mean that today you were surfing the Web over IPv6? Probably not.

Although your computer is ready, the web sites you want to visit are ready, and many sections of the Internet are ready, chances are your home router, office network, Internet Service Provider and possibly some links in the middle of the Internet are not. So, your computer probably was using IPv4, like normal, all day long. If you were one of the lucky few to have full IPv6 connectivity, then you probably saw what looked like the normal Internet, but behind the scenes things were different. It was also possible that sites were breaking a bit, and likely the performance was not as good as normal. This was all expected. And the Internet Service Providers in particular are now looking at how things worked and fix what broke.

Not very exciting, I know, but a very important step in the gradual transition of the Internet to IPv6.

One rather interesting aspect (to a tech geek anyway) is that the IPv4 Internet is today much bigger, more connected, better tested, safer, and performs better than the new IPv6 Internet. So until the new IPv6 Internet comes up to speed, it’s pretty OK to stick with the tried and true stuff.

What I think is significant, however, is that as with any new change, come opportunities for inventions and changes to established processes. The large number of IPv6 addresses, along with some of IPv6’s other features, open up opportunities (and risks) for an interesting future. Just as we didn’t quite know what was awaiting us before we hooked The Eagle’s office to the Internet, we can’t know what awaits us now.

So what does one of these newfangled IP addresses look like? Well, let’s take a look at one of Facebook’s IPv6 addresses and see if you can catch the geeky sense of humor.

2620:0:1c08:4000:face:b00c:0:2

At Norbert’s New Years party last night, we started watching some YouTube videos on his Apple TV and came across one of Jeff Dunham’s comedy routines.  As a result one of the guests, a teacher, came to understand a joke one of her students had made in her class — an innocent joke, that due to unfortunate prior circumstances and a lack of common experience was interpreted more seriously than it was intended.

One of the puppets Dunham uses in his comedy routine is called Achmed the Dead Terrorist, and the puppet has the habit of yelling “Silence - I kill you”.  It was during one of the teacher’s English classes that the commotion in the room brought her to yell “Silence!”, to which the obedient student yelled “I kill you”.  Funny, and he probably scored some points with the girls, but the teacher unfortunately didn’t know the routine.  Instead, she had previously had the unfortunate experience of being a teacher at a school that had had a school shooting by an upset former student.  To her, hearing one of her students yell “I kill you” must have been pretty disturbing and understandably shocking.  The kid did explain the comment by referring to Dunham, but she didn’t see the skit till yesterday.

It’s saddening that school violence has put schools, teachers and parents on such an edge, and that schools aren’t the innocent playgrounds of when I was growing up.  And as wrong as Achmed is in a politically correct sense, Dunham’s skit is still pretty funny.

Most normal people don’t think much about the technical capabilities of their washing machines and dryers, at least not as far as communication capabilities are concerned.  The sane portion of the population thinks about how well the machines clean and dry clothing, how much energy and water they use and well — the price.  As a tech-geek however, I’m wondering why my dryer doesn’t talk to my iPhone.

My apartment in Munich came with a complete built-in kitchen, which to the surprise of most Americans is somewhat of a rarity in Germany.  Typically, you either bring your own kitchen with you, or you pay the previous renter for the value of the kitchen, which includes the stove, the fridge, the dishwasher, the cabinets and well — the kitchen sink.

So, the only real appliances I have to buy are the washer and dryer, which I started investigating today.  A “quick” stop-off at the local Saturn electronics+everything store (the BestBuy of Germany) resulted in me coming back to my apartment with a couple of Miele Wäschepflege catalogs.  I also came back with some ideas how to go massively into debt building my new Entertainment system, but we’ll get to that another day.

Wäschepflege simply means “ClothingCare”, although as with many German words “pflege” conveys a little more meaning and it’s fun to say.  Miele is, for the uninitiated, one of the great German quality brands in the appliance industry.  It is not unheard of for Miele washing machines to work without problems for 30 years.  This would seem to hurt their future business, but with revenues of nearly € 3 billion they’re probably OK.  I’m considering these high-end machines because they are high-quality, gentle on clothing and Eco-friendly (saving water and energy).  The extra cost is a worthwhile investment.

The ultra-high-end models also support a network-connectivity feature called Miele@home (how creative) which ties appliances to a central computer via the power-lines.  A wireless receiver then picks up signals from the central computer and notifies you when your clothes are dry.  My old dryer did this with a really loud buzzer sound.

All kidding aside, you can also use the receiver to control the machines to some extent and a stove can issue instructions to an overhead fan to activate at a certain suction (hi James Dyson) setting.  So I give Miele an A for effort, but a D on execution.  Why isn’t this technology in all your products, and why don’t you just use WiFi and let my iPhone or iPad control things?  Being able to communicate and command your washer and dryer, as funny as that sounds, could end up being really useful.

Here’s the problem the way I see it.  In 20 years from now everything is going to be connected.  And my Miele washer may still be in top form, but it’s going to be a relic of the non-connected 20th Century.  TCP/IP has been around for as long as I have been alive, and WiFi transmitters have gotten cheap, especially when bought in bulk.  Remote software upgrades for appliances are not far behind (along with viruses and exploding microwaves no doubt), but at this point any tech-geek is going to be asking themselves: “Why buy a long-lasting non-connected appliance, when in 5 years all devices will come with connectivity out of the box?  Buy cheap now, wait 5 years, then go for better with ‘Net connectivity.”

As I come up to my 20th anniversary of having logged onto the ‘Net, I am certain that we are now standing at the tipping-point of “universal connectivity”, and a high-end appliance manufacturer like Miele needs to be ahead of the curve and build standards-based TCP/IP connectivity (IPv6 please) and software & feature upgrade-ability into all of their appliances now.  The same holds true for any device manufacturer (automobile and aircraft manufacturers are you listening?) who produces high-value long-term investments.

Chances are that I will still end up buying the non-connected devices (sorry Miele, not your € 3k @home version) and with any luck be able to peddle them off to some technophobe in a few years.  I’ll be sure to write down their home address for when some botnet starts DDoSing my laundry room.

Strangely enough, due to this article, my homepage is now #4 on Google for “Miele Munich”.  I guess that’s due to the fact that Google hasn’t completely standardized how it search-indexes the names of cities with umlauts, or as is the case with München where the city has two correct spellings.

So, I ordered my Washer and Dryer today from the local Elektrofachmark Bauer in Bogenhausen, after getting excellent technical and product capabilities consulting from the sales woman.  And here I need to say something important about Germany.  A sales person in Germany is not the kid they hired off the street and who they sat in front of Wikipedia for 2 hours to become “experts”, like I was when I worked at Ritz Camera in San Francisco.  No, in Germany sales people are trained, and if you go into a specialty store, here we call them Fachhändler, then you will get expert advice about the products.  They will know as much about the products they sell as I know about Web caching.  Perhaps this isn’t as much the case at the big-box stores, but there is a quality difference to the US.  The sales people also have different incentives and don’t seem as pushy, but that may vary with the store.

An interesting bit of info the Sales woman gave me is that device manufacturers, power companies and the government are talking with one-another to set up to three different prices for energy throughout the day.  Although this already exists to some extent, it’s not wide-spread.  One reason why modern washers and dryers have times on them is because you have to be able to start them at certain times.  It’s only a matter of time until the machines themselves become energy-cost-aware.

Well Miele, I’m sorry to have to say, but I ordered the Bosch hardware.  I couldn’t justify the extra 700 Euros your equipment would have cost.  Now, if you had had the Internet-connected / iPhone-enabled remote control and notification system, with energy-price-sensitive capabilities or at least software upgrade-ability then I would have probably shelled out another 250 Euros.  Your stuff is damn good, but for a single guy who washes clothes twice a month it’s just not cost-effective — in 10 years when I have to buy another set of machines, those things will be more energy and water efficient and they will definitely be connected to the ‘Net.  Let’s talk then!

Today, I passed my commercial pilot check-ride and officially traded in my private FAA certificate for the coveted commercial one.  In the past 5 years I can definitely tell that I have improved as a pilot, and with over 400 hours of flying time under my belt I’m significantly more confident in my skills.  Aviation is a continual learning experience so I will continue to learn and experience more.  The next step is to begin work on my flight instructor certificate, a goal that I will hopefully be accomplishing no later than next year.

Sydney is a tourist trap, but in a really nice way.  Having spent a full week in Australia’s largest city I’m still unsure how to classify this town.  Sitting here at Pancakes on The Rocks I’m hopeful this place will live up to my expectations — I’m wishing for better than IHOP — surely that’s achievable.

There’s so much to do in this city, the people are really friendly, even the bums.  You get exactly what you’re promised here, but rarely surprisingly more.

Some exceptions: the backstage tour at the Opera House was great; and our tour guide Alannah, a former Qantas flight attendant, was sincerely interested in everyone having a great time.  The swing dancers at Swing Patrol, who I met on Friday and with whom I swung out to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Sydney Festival, and who then invited me back to a rooftop office party, where my iPod jazz collection was exercised, were awesome and friendly.  And wrapping up the week with an excellent day trip into the Blue Mountains really made me like the Aussies.

Jen, our bus driver and tour guide, was super social and characteristically friendly.  The Oz Trails trip took us into the Blue Mountains, where we took a ride on the the world’s steepest railway, visited a rain forest, saw fantastic scenery reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, and watched a family of Kangaroos hopping across a meadow.

Australia lived up to its expectations, unfortunately so did the foreign tourists, who tried scratching their names in the limestone cliffs, after being repeatedly told not to, and tried feeding the Kangaroos, after being asked not to.  People sometimes have no common sense or courtesy.

Graeme, my Kiwi-Aussie colleague, introduced me to Roo pie and was really fun to hang out with.  Clay, my flight instructor, helped me realize my dream of flying over Sydney and along the Australian coastline.  Pictures from the flight over Sydney on Facebook (log-in required).

So the final verdict, the pancakes were a little dry but good, the strawberries tasty and the bangers excellent.  The locals like using the term “no worries” which, come to think of it, is actually a perfect way to sum-up Sydney.

More than 25 years ago my father stood on this Opera stage.  The set I’m standing on is now for Tosca, a modernized design with 20th century props, but this room is the same — the famous Sydney Opera House.

Having parents who were both opera singers has always been a curiosity, a fun conversation on dates, and an aspect defining my life as slightly different.  The trade-off to moving around the world, switching schools, needing to make new friends and never quite knowing any place as home, is here on this stage.  It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to hear a dramatic tenor singing full volume on an opera stage, and doubly so what it’s like to have that man be your father.  And it isn’t about silly things like seeing your father die on stage, but rather the overwhelming voice.

Here in Sydney, home to the most beautiful and unique opera house, an architectural masterwork, one that was supposed to cost $6 million dollars and take 3 years to build, but instead took over 13 years and $103 million, my father sang as a guest tenor.

Halfway around the world I’ve traveled to see this, and to walk around the dressing rooms on the behind the scenes tour.  We visited what was recently Liza Minnelli’s dressing room and I played chopsticks on the Steinway that has been used by so many famous musicians — probably not to play chopsticks.  The dressing room has quite a view, out onto the Sydney harbour no less.  But all that pales in comparison with imagining my father dying on this stage.  ;-)  Doesn’t the hero always die in operas?

It’s hard to describe what this part of the world looks like from the air, but beautiful isolation would fit the bill.  Here at 36,000 feet I am comfortably typing away on my iPhone after having had breakfast courtesy China Air.  We’ve just crossed into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, a moment in my life I’ll have to reflect on in a later post, but I still find it fascinating to be flying in an American-built Boeing 747, owned by the Chinese communist government, over the former USSR.  Although I am traveling to Australia on my German passport, the American in me wonders what it was like for Gary Powers to be so high over this remarkable part of the world in his U-2 spy plane.

We’re two hours from Beijing now and the sun is finally shining on the snow-covered expanse of the Chinese mainland.  We’ve been flying along the trans-Siberian railway ever since we flew over Moscow, another city I would have loved to visit on this trip, and from up here it’s pretty clear how this place works, either you’re near the railroad or you’re a polar bear — I jest, but once we crossed the Ural mountain range into Asia, it was remarkable to still see signs of human life — apparently able to cling everywhere on this blue marble of ours.  This ‘fly-over country’ isn’t so different from the way parts of the US look in the winter, but just to the south of us are the Himalayas — oh why did we have to fly so far north.  No worries, surely I’ll get an opportunity to pilot an airplane around the peak of Everest one day.

In a few moments we’ll be touching down at Beijing’s new Olympics-inspired airport, unfortunately there’s cloud cover so I won’t get a chance to catch a glimpse of the Great Wall — that too will have to wait for another trip.  For now I’ll have to be content with the history-making nature of this brief stay.  Just yesterday my 98-year old grandfather told me that ever since my great-great-great-grandfather served as a German missionary in China, no one from my family has been in China since the 19th Century!  I’m not planning to preach to anyone, in case you’re wondering.  What incredible mountains so close to the city.

Looking down on the city now, I realize where I’ve seen this place before.  I designed this exact city-grid  in SimCity 2000 — everything is so symmetric and even the little cars move just like in the game.

Finally, on what seemed like the longest straight-in approach in history, with the Jumbo Jet’s slats deployed, must have been 15 minutes, flying at a mere 255 mph, is that normal?, we are sitting at the gate.  The air is oh so smoggy, giving the text on the catering van pulling up to my aircraft “Beijing Air Catering” an ironic - yet promising - meaning.

Here I am for four hours and then it’s off to Sydney!

I don’t typically find myself listening to Bon Jovi, let alone watching his videos at the Burger King in the Munich train station.  Nor does his new song remind me of Mozart, but I like the title to his new song “We weren’t born to follow”.

Face it, we all ask ourselves from time to time what road we’re on, trying to figure out where we’re going and deciding whether it’s worth going there.  In our cars or airplanes we glance at the GPS — in life there’s no such gizmo to guide us.  Sometimes we wing it, sometimes we take other people’s advice, and sometimes we listen to aging rock stars.  I think Bon Jovi asks an interesting question though — are we happy following?

Certainly we must follow certain rules in society, and learning often starts by following in the footsteps of others.  When we’re growing up our parents tell us what we can and cannot do, but often we’re unsettled by those rules and rebel by not following.  Why do we feel that way, and why do we have such a strong urge to chart our own course?

An outside observer would be truly baffled by our world, everywhere you look there are signs telling us what we should and shouldn’t do, lines are painted on the road, keeping us in our lanes, and we build fences where we want others not to go.  (Perhaps that’s why I like flying in the open sky so much.)  Then when we talk to each other we can’t help telling others what to do.  Sure we may have had experiences that taught us not to stick our hands in the fire, and sharing that wisdom is key to being human.

One of my favorite memories of my cousin was when he let his son play with the candles on the Christmas tree.  He was over him like a hawk, but he let his son stick his finger in the flame, because that’s what the little boy wanted to do.  The requisite “trösten” followed and made everything OK, but I admired my cousin for giving his son freedom to make mistakes.

So if following is good, if getting others to do what we think is right, if we constantly come up with ever cleverer ways to trick others into doing what we want… why don’t we like following?  In fact, we don’t even honor followers, we look down on them.  Think of who we look up to?  The men and women who defy following, the ones who do things others think are crazy, those are the ones we build statues to, honor with holidays, emboss on our coins, or for whom we display their record-setting airplanes in our museums.

If following is bad, shouldn’t we teach that to our kids?  Shouldn’t we encourage utter independence in our schools, governments and companies?

Of course anarchy doesn’t sound so great either.  Cultures have different approaches to this kind of thing.  Germany, where I am now, is a country that is even made fun of for following rules, but things like the unrestricted speed sections of the autobahn would be a catastrophe without rule-following.

In the U.S. on the other hand, we seem to be constantly breaking rules.  Remember the last time you drove under the speed limit on a U.S. freeway… yeah, me neither.

Sadly, I doubt I have any great wisdom to impart here, but perhaps that’s good.  Picasso once said: “a painting is never finished, it is only abandoned.”

I’ll cross-post to facebook for comments, in case you have anything to add.  And I’ll leave you with the thoughts of another famous philosopher, Douglas Adams who wrote: “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Physicist David Deutsch presents a fascinating view of the problems we face in the world, how to think about solving them, and then much more in these three talks at TED.

• Our place in the cosmos
• A new way to explain explanation
• Parallel universes and you

In anticipation for my trip, one that is sure to be epic, I have finally given in and setup a twitter account.  Feel free to follow me here, follow me there, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.  And yes, I’ll be cross-posting to facebook as well.