botWerks

we recently took a vacation which was a great opportunity to catch up on a bunch of quasi-work related reading. while i certainly sifted through a lot of bland and tired stuff, there was some stuff that percolated to the surface as being useful and worth of passing along.

• Running Out of Numbers? The Impending Scarcity of IPv4 Addresses and What To Do About It (benjamin edelman) – this is definitely worth a read for anyone who’s interested in the IPv4 depletion issues we’re running into as an industry and it provides a surprisingly good background review of the problem space. (IPv4 and IPv6 history and high-level technical issues overview) if you have to give someone a single paper to read regarding the IPv4 depletion situation, this would definitely be at the top of my list.
• The problem of synthetically generating IP traffic matrices: initial recommendations (antonio nucci, et al) – as someone who’s interested in realistic testing scenarios for routing platforms i thought this was a great overview of the challenges that arise in constructing a appropriately balanced synthetic traffic. definitely worth the read for router dweebs, but high on the nerd factor.

on a decidedly non-nerdish note

i was also able to burn through naomi wolf’s, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot . while ms. wolf certainly goes for the emotional jugular here with the constant comparison to the nazi takeover in germany and mussolini’s rise to power in italy, it’s certainly worth noting the parallels. it should be interesting to see what transpires with an Obama presidency. there’s no shortage of things which need to be corrected in terms of the direction of this country. this book certainly provides a list of places to start. the question remains as to whether we as a country can address these matters at the same time we’re addressing the economic downturn.

when folks worried about their jobs and homes, correcting lapses in the core tenets of our democracy tend to move to the back burner.