Cable Labs Day 1 Wrap Up

A little diagram of an IP address (IPv4)Image via Wikipedia

So today was my first day ever attending the CableLabs Summer Conference. There were over 1000 attendees there from the US, France, Holland, Japan and many other places. There were people from all kinds of MSOs, hardware and software vendors and even engineers from Apple and Google.

Today I attended a session on IP TV where a panel of executives from Cox, Rogers, Comcast, Time Warner and Charter talked at length about the evolution of the IP TV universe and the MSOs secret plans to survive.

The executive from Rogers used the phrase "Ultimate Disruptor" to describe the Internet. They all agreed that the disruptive power of the internet was going to completely alter the landscape of the MSO forever. It's already started! They talked about Hulu and other "over the top" providers at some length but didn't really address Boxee.

I asked about the world of the future where independent content producers no longer need a traditional network like NBC Universal or ESPN to get their content out to end users, then the value proposition of the MSO becomes only in the delivery of a fat data pipe. At that point we cease to be a "Cable Company". Right?

So then I sat in a session that was a discussion of the implementation of IPv6 by the MSO. It was a FASCINATING discussion. Seriously. I'm such a damn nerd for saying it but it's incredible the word people have put into engineering this technology.

James Woodyatt from Apple delivered a phenomenal presentation which highlighted the complexity of the transition to IPv6 and spelled out the many many reasons why it just HAS TO HAPPEN. His use of the metaphor of the revolution was great. It was a very compelling argument. I especially liked learning about the many ways that Apple has already adopted IPv6 into its products. Apple Engineering is phenomenal, creative and unceasingly brilliant. I would love to work there, with truly inspired people.

Also, Broadcom and Cisco presented as well on the various strategies for migrating to IPv6 in an environment where you have thousands of devices (millions?) that do not have a dual v4/v6 stack and can only do IPv4.

It turns out there is an ISP in France called "Free" that has a complete IPv6 backbone and they actually developed a system called 6RD

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm completely exhaused and I'm presenting tomorrow at 4:15 Mountain Time.

I'll write more about my experience tomorrow night!
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