The fourth day of the conference opened with a keynote by Eric P Allman, author of a little MTA some people may have heard of called Sendmail - an "... old program that has changed the world."

Wednesday opened with Geoff Huston from APNIC presenting on Internet Address Exhaustion, and how it presents a real and present threat to the openness of today’s Internet. Geoff walked the audience through the history of the internet, and covered some of the barriers to IPv6 adoption.

The second day of Linux.conf.au in Brisbane, Australia, opened with keynote speaker Vinton Cerf, vice president of Google. Vint Cerf is often spoken of as one of the 'fathers of the internet', having been one of the co-designers of the tcp/ip protocol.

“ Against all odds, Linux.conf.au is here! ” This week more than 500 people from around the world are arriving in Brisbane for Linux.conf.au 2011. As last month Brisbane and indeed much of Queensland was devastated by severe flooding, it’s an incredible effort by the conference organisers that the conference is able to continue at all.