I spent a few days in Miami for a NANOG conference. It was, I believe, the third time I've been to Miami for NANOG. Below is the view from my hotel room. Through some fluke, I received a nicer room (or view at least) than most attendees. No balcony here, so shooting through the window results in some goofy colors. Click to embiggen.
A few interesting things happened during this trip. If you're any kind of geek at all, then you know that the Internet sort of ran out of IPv4 addresses, as predicted, on February 1st, 2011. What really happened is that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority gave the last batch of addresses to the five Regional Internet Registries. This means that organizations will be able to get addresses from the registries for the next few months (or more, depending on the region). Once they run out there will be no more never-before-used IPv4 addresses, and organizations must either receive only IPv6 addresses, or find some other way (grey market) to get the old kind.
This was also the week of massive public protests in Egypt. It was a topic of discussion at the meeting because Egypt was entirely disconnected from the Internet for approximately five days. That is an unprecedented occurrence.
The noteworthy topic was the weather. While Miami was nice and balmy, much of the country was receiving snow. Many conference attendees were worried about their return trips. I wasn't significantly affected because I had to spend a couple of days in Virginia right after NANOG, and then flew direct to Seattle.
You can't really tell from the above picture, but the hotel has a triangular shape. We wondered what was in the center and (jokingly) theorized that adding the words "Ballistic Missle" to the signage might be appropriate.
