All posts by Like Tangents In The Rain

Societies

MPEG envisages royalty-free MPEG video coding standard

Leave a comment

The MPEG working group ise looking for a new compression standard which would be “in line with the expected usage models of the internet”. It would like the new standard to achieve “substantially better compression performance” than MPEG-2 and is hoping it may be comparable with the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC baseline profile.

 

This article derives from H-Online’s article: 
MPEG calling for royalty-free web video codec

The issue of video codecs has been particularly controversial over the last year with the emergence of Google’s royalty free WebM/VP8 codec taking on the MPEG groups’s royalty encumbered H.264 codec. Last week, MPEG LA, a patent pooling company not connected to the ISO/IEC MPEG group, announced that it was beginning a search for patents essential to VP8 with an eye to creating a patent pool and charging royalties. Royalties for the use of H.264 for video on the internet were dropped in August 2010, but are still required to be paid by the makers of web browsers and video encoders.

 

Currently, it is unknown how many of, or how enthusiastically, the participants in MPEG will rise to the call for proposals. The March meeting of the MPEG group will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, over the 21st to the 25th.

 

Following is the press release from MPEG

 

MPEG anticipates March 2011 CfP for Type-1 Video Coding Standard

 

MPEG has been producing standards that provide industry with the best video compression technologies. In recognition of the growing importance that the Internet plays in the generation and consumption of video content, MPEG intends to develop a new video compression standard in line with the expected usage models of the Internet. The new standard is intended to achieve substantially better compression performance than that offered by MPEG-2 and possibly comparable to that offered by the AVC Baseline Profile. MPEG will issue a call for proposals on video compression technology at the end of its upcoming meeting in March 2011 that is expected to lead to a standard falling under ISO/IEC “Type-1 licensing”, i.e. intended to be “royalty free”.

MPEG moves toward a visual search standard by issuing Draft Call for Proposals

In its latest step toward creating a standard for efficient and interoperable designs of visual search applications, MPEG has issued a draft Call for Proposals at its 95th meeting. Like a barcode reader, but using regular images instead of barcodes, visual search enables the retrieval of related information from databases for tourists, simplified shopping, mobile augmented reality, and other applications.

Specifically, the call seeks technologies that deliver robust matching of images of objects, such as landmarks and text-based documents, that may be partially occluded or captured from various vantage points, and with different camera parameters, or lighting conditions.  The underlying component technologies that are expected to be addressed by the standard include the format of the visual descriptors, and parts of the descriptor extraction process needed to ensure interoperability.  Other component technologies, such as indexing and matching algorithms, may also be incorporated into the new standard.

Further details are outlined in the text of the call available at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/hot_news.htm. The Final Call for Proposals will be issued at the 96th MPEG meeting in March 2011 with responses due in October 2011.

MPEG targets a new phase of 3D video coding standards

A Draft Call for Proposals on 3D Video Coding Technology has also been issued by MPEG at its 95th meeting. This call invites technology submissions providing efficient compression of 3D video and high quality view reconstruction that goes beyond the capabilities of existing standards. MPEG has already delivered 3D compression formats to the market, including MVC and frame-compatible stereoscopic formats, which are being deployed by industry for packaged media and broadcast services. However, the market needs are expected to evolve and new types of 3D displays and services will be offered. With this call, MPEG embarks on a new phase of 3D standardization that anticipates these future needs. The next-generation of 3D standards will define the 3D data format and associated compression technology to facilitate the generation of multiview output to enable both advanced stereoscopic display processing and improved support for auto-stereoscopic displays. Further details are outlined in MPEG’s Vision on 3D Video (http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/visions/3dv/index.htm). The Final Call for Proposals will be issued at the 96th MPEG meeting in March 2011 with responses due in September 2011.

Amendment to MPEG-2 systems is finalized at 95th meeting

MPEG is continuously improving the popular MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) standard (ISO/IEC 13818-1), one of its most widely accepted standards for broadcast industries.  At its 95th meeting, MPEG has finalized a new amendment to support recently developed video coding standards, Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and Multiview Video Coding (MVC), in MPEG-2 TS. This amendment extends the AVC video descriptor to signal the presence of a frame packing arrangement in an associated supplemental enhancement information message for the underlying AVC video stream component. The new amendment also adds signaling of an operating point descriptor of MVC which enables transmission systems to convey the relevant operating points that can be used by receiving devices.

In a related project, MPEG has also started a new amendment to signal stereoscopic video services carried in MPEG-2 TS. This amendment will support not only frame compatible video services but also service compatible video services which will allow implementation of backward compatible stereoscopic video services in HDTV systems.

MPEG hosts MPEG-V awareness event

At its 95th meeting, MPEG hosted the MPEG-V Awareness Event 2011, at which the full range of MPEG-V technologies, including several products and applications employing the standard, were showcased. These technologies cover applications for multi-sensorial user experience in the home environment, control of virtual worlds by real signals, motion capture systems and real-time avatar animation, multi-platform streaming for virtual worlds and mixed reality games. The workshop presentations are available at http://wg11.sc29.org/mpeg-v.

A hot standard moves fast

MPEG has approved the promotion of Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) to Draft International Standard (DIS) status. The draft is available from the Hot News page of http://mpeg.chiariglione.org.

Responding to a Call – How to Contact MPEG

The text and details related to the Calls mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section,http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to the Calls.

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technologies that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. Experts, past and present, have contributed a series of tutorials and vision documents that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, but if something of interest cannot be found, do not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at:http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/technologies.htm.

Further Information

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 96 Geneva CH 21-25 March 2011
No. 97 Torino IT 18-22 July 2011
No. 98 Geneva CH 28-02 November-December 2011
No. 99 San Jose US 06-10 February 2012

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convener of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel:  +39 011 935 04 61
[email protected]

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:

http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/

The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds at [email protected].

Audio Processing

CML Artists on Music Libraries

Leave a comment

Original post: “The library companies seem like used cars sales men, and some of the same songs appear in multiple library so how can they say they have sync rights? my thoughts are that I can use these with out a sync license, because A.
they have no legal standing, B. the songs could be part of any library so only the artist could claim royalties, but the artists are setup with BMI,ASCAP which will get royalties when broadcasted and is the broadcasters responsibility.”

“…are music library licenses a scam?”

Later exposition: “My whole reason in posting this was to more less expose the music library companies, many of the songs these libraries have exist in other libraries (one library company can’t have exclusive rights) so how can they ever know where you got that song from? As far as royalties I always submit a music cue sheet to the broadcaster.

I just feel like we need something better to get music from artist to producer and eliminate these Music Library middle men.”

“I think your reasoning is completely faulty. The same artist could have multiple deals. BMI/ASCAP pays on WRITING the song, but not the performance. If you use the piece without rights from one of the companies, you may get away with it, but perhaps you won’t. If you don’t pay, you certainly wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. The artist and ONE of the libraries has to be paid.

 

It stuns me when creative people think this way. What if you sold stock footage to several libraries (which I have seen in stills), and I used it and didn’t pay? It’s the same as people who have pirated movies. How are any of us creatives getting paid for our work? Are you working for free? Are you giving away your own work? Why do you expect that someone else should not be paid for his creative work? Is it of less value than yours. My guess is that YOUR creative work is less valuable. A musician is creating something from nothing.”

‘I pay for all the music I use.   It is a bargain.

When I write a check for $1000 for, say, a 12 minute corporate film, it hurts for one second, but what kind of score could you get that money, with a dozen cues.

I am a Getty Motion artist and of course I feel the same way about my stock footage.  I get pretty upset when I allow use or license my footage for one production, and then I see it in other productions from the same production company.”

“When you buy a used car, are they selling the same physical car to more than one person? Or are you thinking that gee the used car lot has twenty of the same make and model of that car and my friend already bought one, so I’m going to go down to the lot and take another one whenever I need. I mean really the cars are all just copies anyway, and lots of them are in different used car lots.

BTW – Even youtube will require you to provide proof of music license when you join their revenue sharing program.”

“There are some terms being thrown around here which aren’t quite accurate. Copyright / License / Royalties are all completely separate (though often they are linked via contract). I’m no lawyer, but I do make a living writing music for spots and films so I’ve had to wade through these a few times. Here’s how I view it as a content creator.

SHORT ANSWER? The songs have a VERY CLEAR legal standing, and you MUST read the license that came with the material to know what you can and cannot do legally.

When I write music, even if it’s “for hire,” I retain the Royalties in perpetuity unless I’m stupid enough to sign them away. If a piece I wrote appears in a broadcast, I get paid royalties. Now, back to the “stupid enough…” part. If I sell my music to a Library and they turn around and offer it to you as “royalty free” what that means is that when I gave my music to that library I waived any rights to future royalties. I don’t like that… so I don’t sell my stuff to those  companies. But plenty of composers will, and that’s their right. BMI/ASCAP are in the business of collecting royalties. They have nothing  to do with copyright or sync licenses.

 

“Many libraries sell or even GIVE you a huge library of CDs. You APPEAR to own them, but …, you need to know (READ) the agreement. I have a giant collection of APM music for trailers. But owning the CDs doesn’t give me ANY rights to use them. They GAVE me the library, so I could have easy, quick access, but I have to individually license every single cut from the CDs.

… We bought a starter set of CDs and they kept supplying us with additional, new content, but we also paid an annual licensing fee to use the music, and we had to keep a record of which cuts we used, even though we had a blanket license. But whoever bought those CDs when the post company went out of business would have absolutely NO right to use those cuts, just because they owned the CDs. They would need to pay the same blanket annual licensing fee or needle drops to actually put the music on anything.

I’ve also bought “royalty free” albums from Sounddogs and other libraries and they specifically state that you are getting sync rights, but not broadcast rights, or that your rights are limited.

“In SOME cases, the act of buying the library gains you a sync license…”

“I’d point out that Music Libraries do exactly what your asking: Get music from artist to producer (or consumer.)  iTunes is the most visible example of that, enabling convenient access to popular music.

Production music libraries—like stock footage libraries—make it a lot more convenient for people in need of music to find and legally use music in productions at relatively affordable prices.

These libraries make what’s often a sizeable investment to acquire or make the recordings and optain the licensing or copy rights to songs.

Then they pay more to manufacture and package CD’s… coupled these days with expensive websites that allow you to search, preview, license and download a cut that gets you out of a jam at 2:17am on a Monday morning when you have to deliver a finished edit on disc at 7a.m.”

Video Processing

Ken Stone on Pixelmator

Leave a comment

 

Pixelmator is a relatively new application and, as such, it is not yet a full powered photo editing application like Photoshop, but it is much like Photoshop. It employs the same type of palettes, tools, adjustments and menus. Almost all of Pixlmator’s keyboard shortcuts are the same as Photoshop’s. So, if you have worked in Photoshop, there is very little to learn when using Pixelmator; you’ll feel quite comfortable. If you start off using Pixelmator and then, at some point, graduate to Photoshop, the transition will require little effort on your part to learn the Photoshop workflow. Pixelmator is Photoshop-esque.

That’s the beginning of Ken Stone’s new review of an image editing tool, which goes on to give detailed views, both narratively and pictorially, of this cool and inexpensive piece of software on Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro Web Site. Here is the link for this article: Pixelmator

The site has a stable of writers who put out a weekly set of information on a variety of tools on a weekly basis. If you like your information delivered to your mailbox with a comfortable style, you can subscribe with the link at the bottom of every page. Every review or how-to will count to your weekly ‘continuing education’ requirements.

Societies

CineExpo, Now CineEurope

Leave a comment

UNIC, the International Union of Cinemas, and Prometheus Global Media has announced a rebranding following last years successful 20th CineExpo. The name is being changed to CineEurope. 

The relationship continues, after a rocky transition felt by NATO’s take-over of ShoWest, now CinemaCon (to be held in April 2011) and an odd foray by UNIC into producing its own expo in Brussels last year. 

The press release is at CINEMA EXPO INTERNATIONAL IS NOW CINEEUROPE, THE OFFICIAL CONVENTION OF UNIC

The next CineEurope will be held on 27 – 30 June, 2011 at the RAI in Amsterdam.

Exhibitor News

AMC and Regal Forming New Venture to Acquire and Release Movies

Leave a comment

The following LA Times piece goes into some of the details, but many of the implementation details are unknown…probably not completely worked out.

In addition to the many studio/cable cross-ownerships, within the labyrinths of movie making and cinema exhibition, there are already close connections. Major player Paramount is only a theoretical Redstone family member away from the 1,500 screens owned by National Amusements (which also owns MovieTickets.com 50/50 with AMC.) There are also connections within Regal, as the primary stockholder (Philip Anschutz) owns Walden Media, the production group who put together Narnia, Winn-Dixie and Charlotte’s Web.

See the LA Times article at: AMC and Regal forming new venture to acquire and release movies

Also, see FirstShowing.net’s article for some interesting views: AMC & Regal Partnering on New Acquisition/Distribution Company « FirstShowing.net

Excerpts from the Times article:

The nation’s two largest movie theater chains are about to encroach on Hollywood  studios’ turf.

Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. are close to launching a joint venture to acquire and release independent movies, according to people familiar with the situation, a part of the business historically dominated by the Hollywood studios.

The move potentially disrupts the longtime and delicate business relationship between theater operators and studios, in which they have acted as partners and divided a movie’s box office ticket sales. Instead, the venture would essentially thrust theaters into the studio’s role of distributor, turning a partner into a rival as the theaters’ own movies compete for screens against those from the studios.

It also is occurring against a backdrop of increasingly strained relations between theaters and studios as the latter are looking to release movies directly into the home through video-on-demand shortly after they have appeared in theaters. Theater operators fear that will dissuade people from going to the movies.

The still unnamed company has yet to acquire any movies. However, the partners have hired a chief executive: Tom Ortenberg, a former senior executive for the Weinstein Co. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., who has been working as an independent consultant since 2009.

AMC and Regal hope in part that by acquiring their own movies for distribution they will fill the supply-and-demand gap created by Hollywood’s downshift in movie making. From 2007 to 2010, the number of movie releases in the U.S. dropped 16%, according to Box Office Mojo. At the same time, the theater industry’s trade group estimates that the number of screens in the country has risen 3%, making fewer pictures available for a larger number of screens.

And with attendance flat over the last five years and down 5% in 2010, theater owners have been experimenting with ways to draw more people into their venues, such as showing live sports events and concerts.

Some chains have already taken steps to promote independent movies. AMC currently runs a program called AMC Independent that helps market independent films that play in its theaters. However, the company does not buy distribution rights to the pictures as its joint venture with Regal would.

People familiar with the plan said the joint venture will not compete with the studios by acquiring big-budget event films. Instead, the new company will seek out independently financed movies that may not otherwise make it into theaters, such as low-budget dramas, comedies and horror pictures.

Independent or specialty films have been largely eschewed by the studios in recent years but are experiencing a resurgence thanks to such broad-appeal movies as Oscar contenders “Black Swan” and “The King’s Speech.”

The venture’s movies will have automatic access to theaters owned by AMC and Regal, which together control 31% of the nation’s nearly 40,000 screens, but will also be offered to other cinemas. AMC and Regal also will aim to release movies on DVD, television and the Internet, which would also provide new sources of revenue that theater companies sorely need.

While a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court consent decree barred the major studios from owning movie theaters, the federal government has relaxed the rules over the last two decades. In 1996, MCA Inc., the former owner of Universal Pictures, bought a large stake in theater company Cineplex Odeon. Also, the parent company of Sony Pictures Entertainment previously owned Loews Theaters.

Currently, the Massachusetts theater chain National Amusements Inc., is privately held by Sumner Redstone, the controlling shareholder in Paramount Pictures parent Viacom Inc. And, the largest shareholder of Regal, Philip Anschutz, also owns the movie production company Walden Media.

In addition, independent film financiers such as Mark Cuban own small movie companies and theater chains.

Ortenberg did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a representative for Regal. An AMC spokeswoman declined to comment.

— Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Workflow

Marvin Data System

Leave a comment

MARVIN layoutA lot of nice touches from a film maker who has had find the solutions to his own problems. This system backs up data in the field, puts the data out to LTO and whatever other format, the cleverly interfaces with the post projects EDL/XML.

Version 2.0 gets introduced at NAB in the Cintel booth. We aren’t told what the changes are from Version 1, but it all should be interesting. See: Meet MARVIN

Community FAQs

Photography — Fun

Leave a comment

OK; So, he is my nephew. OK; So it is not digital cinema. Still…for fun…

ZEN

ZEN

Silver Halide C-Print

Limited Edition of 450 + 10 Artist Proofs

This is the first 4-to-1 ratio image to my Limited Edition Collection.  I wanted to make an image that had this long compositional shape, and found the perfect foundation in this film.  Captured with a Linhof Technorama, a specialized panoramic camera, the film is 6x17cm and allows for excellent image quality to the largest of sizes.

This shape piece can work well in problematic wall spots in your home that require long and skinny compositions, or in those most popular spots above sofas, beds, fireplace mantles, dining room walls and even hallways.  

The image draws you in to explore closer.  The eye wants to explore the scene, the falling water and misty rocks and moss.  The piece can work as a tool for meditation, or simply an element of design – introducing a peaceful water element to a space.  The colors aren’t so bold as to conflict with surrounding colors, but strong enough to be visually stunning.

Now, for the Sizing and Pricing:

See it at his site:

Video Processing

iPad – Cut Notes

Leave a comment

Digital Rebellion LLC today announced the availability of Cut Notes for iPad, a tool for taking timecode notes on set or during a screening. If you are a Producer, Director or Editor that still hand-writes timecode during a screening, say Hello to Cut Notes.

TIMECODE NOTES
As simple as tapping Play along with your Editor, you’ll never again worry about manually writing timecode next to your thoughts during a screening.

NOTE KEYS
With a single tap of a Note Key, your notes can be a short as one word or an entire phrase, all added instantly at the current timecode. Cut Notes frees you from looking at what you’re writing and allows you to focus on what’s important: the cut.

CUSTOMIZE
Change any Note Key, create new pages of Note Keys, all centered around your workflow. Cut Notes tailors to your Post Production needs.

EXPORT
Cut Notes is platform independent. Whether you’re screening a DVD, a QuickTime file the Editor sent out, or sitting in an edit bay with your team, Cut Notes just works. After you’ve made your notes, Cut Notes can e-mail Avid Locator or Marker List files, which can be imported into NLEs like Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, and more. Cut Notes can also e-mail, copy, and print your notes using AirPrint. Importing a Marker List into Final Cut Pro requires the free Cut Notes Marker Import utility for Mac OS X available from http://www.digitalrebellion.com/cutnotes.

MANUAL ENTRY
Swipe all the way to the left to make notes with the keyboard if a Note Key doesn’t apply.

PROJECT & CUT MANAGEMENT
Have as many projects as you want, at any of the common frame rates. Inside each project you can have an unlimited number of cuts. You’ll always be able to reference an older cut in case you think your Editor missed something from the last round of notes.

“Cut Notes is a perfect example of how an iPad can supplement production & post production workflows.” 
– Craig Bergonzoni, Editor/Producer 

“I’m really happy with the software… I’d feel comfortable using Cut Notes in a screening with executives.” 
– Chris Chris Losnegard, Story Producer

Cut Notes is priced at $7.99 and is available for the iPad on the iTunes App Store.
More information is available at http://www.digitalrebellion.com/cutnotes.

About Digital Rebellion
Digital Rebellion LLC specializes in workflow tools for post production professionals. Our other products include FCS Maintenance Pack – a must-have tool for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting Final Cut Studio – and FCP Versioner, a utility that backs up every revision to a Final Cut Pro project and generates changelogs between versions – making it an essential tool in fast-paced collaborative post production environments.
Our products are used daily by Fortune 500 companies and studios on projects including NCIS:Los Angeles and Cougar Town.
More information is available at http://www.digitalrebellion.com.

Articles and News

DoJ Transcripts: Official Submissions

Leave a comment

The issues of providing “full and equal enjoyment” of services promised under the Americans with Disabilities Act by movie theaters is divisive. There are 1160 comments on the DoJ website, ranging from “Parent of a deaf person” to advocacy groups like the National Association of Theater Owners. 

DoJ Site Link: The Docket Folder Summary; Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Movie Captioning and Video Description

Janice Doherty of the Spokane Fire Department commented:

Given current technology, all persons with hearing loss should be able to access public theaters for any performance. Governmental as well as private agencies have been too slow to comprehend the inequities that persons with hearing loss, the largest group of persons with a specific disability, must face on a daily basis. It is not right that individuals with hearing loss are systematically relegated to second class citizenship (or worse) when it comes to opportunity for participating fully in community and cultural conversations. The capacity for inclusive communication exists: it should be required. 

This article is a stub that will be amended as time allows to get some of the more critical responses posted as attachments – the DoJ site is cumbersome (at best.)

Oral submissions can be found at the following link:
DoJ Transcripts: Battle Lines Drawn

The original Request for Comments that the answers refer to are at this link:
Request for Comments: DoJ: Movie Captioning, Video Description

Exhibitor News

DoJ Transcripts: Official Submissions

Leave a comment

The issues of providing “full and equal enjoyment” of services promised under the Americans with Disabilities Act by movie theaters is divisive. There are 1160 comments on the DoJ website, ranging from “Parent of a deaf person” to advocacy groups like the National Association of Theater Owners. 

DoJ Site Link: The Docket Folder Summary; Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Movie Captioning and Video Description

Janice Doherty of the Spokane Fire Department commented:

Given current technology, all persons with hearing loss should be able to access public theaters for any performance. Governmental as well as private agencies have been too slow to comprehend the inequities that persons with hearing loss, the largest group of persons with a specific disability, must face on a daily basis. It is not right that individuals with hearing loss are systematically relegated to second class citizenship (or worse) when it comes to opportunity for participating fully in community and cultural conversations. The capacity for inclusive communication exists: it should be required. 

This article is a stub that will be amended as time allows to get some of the more critical responses posted as attachments – the DoJ site is cumbersome (at best.)

Oral submissions can be found at the following link:
DoJ Transcripts: Battle Lines Drawn

The original Request for Comments that the answers refer to are at this link:
Request for Comments: DoJ: Movie Captioning, Video Description

Tangential Art and Science

Understand IPv6 Addresses

Leave a comment

IPv6 Address Types

Increasing the IP address pool was one of the major forces behind developing IPv6. It uses a 128-bit address, meaning that we have a maximum of 2¹²⁸ addresses available, or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, or enough to give multiple IP addresses to every grain of sand on the planet. So our friendly old 32-bit IPv4 dotted-quads don’t do the job anymore; these newfangled IPs require eight 16-bit hexadecimal colon-delimited blocks. So not only are they longer, they use numbers and letters. At first glance, those mondo IPv6 addresses look like impenetrable secret code:

 2001:0db8:3c4d:0015:0000:0000:abcd:ef12

We’ll dissect this in a moment and learn that’s it not such a scary thing, but first let’s look at the different types of IPv6 addressing.

Get more info and links to other data about “Preparing for the Migration” to IPv6 at Enterprise Networking Planets. This article is:
Understand IPv6 Addresses
September 20, 2006         By Carla Schroder

Under IPv4 we have the old familiar unicast, broadcast and multicast addresses. In IPv6 we have unicast, multicast and anycast. With IPv6 the broadcast addresses are not used anymore, because they are replaced with multicast addressing.

IPv6 Unicast

This is similar to the unicast address in IPv4 – a single address identifying a single interface. There are four types of unicast addresses:

  • Global unicast addresses, which are conventional, publicly routable address, just like conventional IPv4 publicly routable addresses.

  • Link-local addresses are akin to the private, non-routable addresses in IPv4 (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16). They are not meant to be routed, but confined to a single network segment. Link-local addresses mean you can easily throw together a temporary LAN, such as for conferences or meetings, or set up a permanent small LAN the easy way.

  • Unique local addresses are also meant for private addressing, with the addition of being unique, so that joining two subnets does not cause address collisions.

  • Special addresses are loopback addresses, IPv4-address mapped spaces, and 6-to-4 addresses for crossing from an IPv4 network to an IPv6 network.

If you read about site-local IPv6 addresses, which are related to link-local, these have been deprecated, so you don’t need to bother with them.

Multicast

Multicast in IPv6 is similar to the old IPv4 broadcast address   a packet sent to a multicast address is delivered to every interface in a group. The IPv6 difference is it’s targeted   instead of annoying every single host on the segment with broadcast blather, only hosts who are members of the multicast group receive the multicast packets. IPv6 multicast is routable, and routers will not forward multicast packets unless there are members of the multicast groups to forward the packets to. Anyone who has ever suffered from broadcast storms will appreciate this mightily.

Anycast

An anycast address is a single address assigned to multiple nodes. A packet sent to an anycast address is then delivered to the first available node. This is a slick way to provide both load-balancing and automatic failover. The idea of anycast has been around for a long time; it was proposed for inclusion in IPv4 but it never happened.

Several of the DNS root servers use a router-based anycast implementation, which is really a shared unicast addressing scheme. (While there are only thirteen authoritative root server names, the total number of actual servers is considerably larger, and they are spread all over the globe.) The same IP address is assigned to multiple interfaces, and then multiple routing tables entries are needed to move everything along.

IPv6 anycast addresses contain fields that identify them as anycast, so all you need to do is configure your network interfaces appropriately. The IPv6 protocol itself takes care of getting the packets to their final destinations. It’s a lot simpler to administer than shared unicast addressing.

Tangential Art and Science

Last of the IPv4 Addresses Allocated

Leave a comment

 

Early this morning, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) announced that it had been allocated two /8 address blocks from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA ). Those two blocks, 39/8 and 106/8, were the last unallocated blocks in the IANA free pool of IPv4 address available to Regional Internet Registries (RIR). With the allocation, the final days of IPv4 have moved closer as the number of available addresses that can be allocated will dwindle.

“Please be aware, this will be the final allocation made by IANA under the current framework and will trigger the final distribution of five /8 blocks, one to each RIR under the agreed global policy for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 address space,” APNIC wrote on its website.

From the Enterprising Networking Planet article:
Last of the IPv4 Addresses Allocated
By Sean Michael Kerner           February 1, 2011

IANA has scheduled a press conference for Thursday morning to discuss the final allocation of the last five blocks of IPv4 space. The policy of distributing the final five equally among the RIRs is a long standing policy designed for the endgame of IPv4.

While the IANA free pool is now gone, that doesn’t mean that IPv4 address space itself has been exhausted. The RIRs make requests from IANA for free, …

APNIC expects to continue to make normal allocations of IPv4 address space to its constituents for the next three to six months. After that,….

In the U.S., the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the RIR responsible for address allocation. John Curran, CEO of ARIN, …

“We have no official forecast, and any estimate would change rapidly depending on requests received,” …

More impetus for the IPv6 migration

With freely available, unallocated IPv4 addresses almost gone, the move to the next generation IPv6 addressing system which provides significantly more address space than IPv4 must begin in earnest….

To date, IPv6 adoption has been slow, though the RIRs have been advocating for its adoption.

“The RIRs have been working with network operators at the local, regional, and global level for more than a decade …

Pawlik added that the transition to IPv6 from IPv4 represents an opportunity for even more innovative applications …

Though IPv4 is now nearly exhausted, the move to IPv4 will take time. The Internet Society has scheduled World IPv6 day for June ….

“Internet users need to realize that the Internet will be in transition over several years, with both IPv4 and IPv6 running in parallel,…

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Storage and Networks

Mac OSX Deployment Package from Google

Leave a comment
  • Push security patches, whether the Mac is on an internal network/VPN or not.
  • Force mandatory installation of some packages, while allowing others to be optional.
  • Tightly manage Apple-provided updates.
  • Scale without deploying and maintaining additional server infrastructure.
  • Obtain reports on all of this and the fleet overall.

    • Today we are open-sourcing Simian, our solution to enterprise-class Mac OS X package deployment. Simian uses App Engine-based hosting to scale with the needs of your growing enterprise, and a Munki-based client which will continue to evolve through the outstanding work of Greg Neagle and the Munki community. We hope this to be the first of many announcements in sharing Google’s unique IT approach with the larger community.

    For more information, please visit our Simian project page, join the discussion list, and downloadthe code. For more information about Munki, please visit its project page.

    By John Randolph and Justin McWilliams, Google Corporate Platforms Engineering Team

    The Original Google Open Source Announcement is at: 

    Simian: Mac OS X package deployment via App Engine

    Saturday, January 29, 2011 | 4:15 PM

    Labels: , , , 

    Tangential Art and Science

    The Internet Kill Switch–Strom

    Leave a comment

    The senator got his wish for a simple on/off switch for the Internet, but it didn’t go down quite as he had planned when he first proposed the idea before Congress last year. Early last Friday just after midnight local time, the Egyptian telecoms authority turned off almost all Internet and cell phone access to its 80 million residents. What is astounding is how easy and effective this action seemed to be. While no one directly involved is actually talking, savvy folks have figured out it was a series of phone calls to the network operations staffs of the service providers involved. Egypt is served by only a few Internet providers and cell carriers. Within a few minutes, the entire country went offline. SInce then, some cell service has been restored.

    Read the entire article and other interesting tech ruminations from David Strom at strominator.com:
    The Internet Kill Switch

    Another article, much more technical, at ars technica: 
    How Egypt did (and your government could) shut down the Internet   By Iljitsch van Beijnum

    Similarly, this BBC article has a statement from Vodafone:
    Egypt severs internet connection amid growing unrest

    A statement issued by Vodafone Egypt said it had been instructed to suspend services in some areas.

    “Under Egyptian legislation the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply with it,” it said. 

    The Lieberman reference above is explained in this PCMag article:
    Egypt Flips Internet Kill Switch. Will the U.S.?

    No, the thing that surprises me is that the U.S. government has plans for its own Internet Kill Switch.

    The legislation was first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and the former has promised to bring it to the floor again in 2011. It isn’t called anything as obvious as the Internet Kill Switch, of course. It is called the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act.” Who could be against that? Anyone who’s watching the news on TV today, that’s who.

    The proposal calls for the Department of Homeland Security to establish and maintain a list of systems or assets that constitute critical cyber-infrastructure. The President would be able to be able to control those systems. He or she would have ability to turn them off. The kicker: none of this would be subject to judicial review. This is just a proposal, mind you, but it  

     

    What makes this noteworthy is that there are dozens of countries that try to control their net access with a series of firewalls and content filters, most notably Iran and China. These countries allow most Internet traffic through. Egypt has been wide open …

    But there is very little traffic coming in or out of the country, according to Renasys, which tracks this kind of thing and the source of the graphic above. So the first step towards total control ironically is…

    There are some countries that use more than just an off switch for their blockades: …

    Finally, what also helped Egypt’s ability to turn off its Internet is  …

    I hope this column becomes quickly obsolete and access is turned on in Egypt. But in the meantime, they have provided a roadmap that others should take heed.

    Cameras

    Pearls of 3D–Audio Interview, Steve Schklair

    Leave a comment

    Broadcast Engineering has an exclusive interview with 3D entrepreneur Steve Schklair, founder and CEO of 3Ality Digital. The conversation weaves broadcast 3D concerns with feature information. 20 minutes of Must Hear.

    TRAINING 3-D CREWS REACHES CRITICAL LEVEL

    Mandatory listening for anyone who has read the Walter Murch/Roger Ebert article.