IPv6 came a step closer yesterday as ICANN added IPv6 host records to the root DNS servers, reports the BBC. ‘Paul Twomey, president of Icann which oversees the addressing system, told the BBC News website there was a need to start moving to IPv6. “There’s pressure for people to make the conversion to IPv6,” he said. “We’re pushing this as a major issue.” The reason for the urgency, he said, was because the unallocated addresses from the total of 4,294,967,296 possible with IPv4 was rapidly running out. “We’re down to 14% of the unallocated addresses out of the whole pool for version 4,” he said. Projections suggest that this unallocated pool will run out by 2011 at the latest.’”

A Polish IT worker has calculated the exact speed of snail mail after receiving on 3 January a letter which was sent priority mail on 20 December, Reuters reports. Michal Szybalski whipped out his calculator and determined that the missive had spent 294 hours in transit, covering the 11.1km between sender and recipient. The letter had therefore travelled at a mean velocity of 0.03775km/h, which is slower than a Polish garden snail which can clock 0.048km/h, according to Szybalski.

We can’t help feeling there’s a hefty research grant out there waiting for some university team willing to calculate the average speed of mail worldwide in relation to various species of snail, and the possible repercussions on global warming.

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/25/snail_mail/