And in a week that saw the release (to a political commentariat divided along party lines) of the Liberal Party’s broadband policy, Tubes gets Stilgherrian’s take on the week’s activities.

We’re getting close to exhaustion of the IPv4 address space: only a relative handful of 14/8 blocks remain in IANA’s unallocated address pool, and as listeners will hear, some address blocks are being held back as being too “toxic” for production use. A Series of Tubes speaks to APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Houston (who must surely sympathise with Cassandra: uttering accurate prophecy, but too little believed).

And in our regular chat with Stilgherrian, A Series of Tubes says “hello” to the courtroom, “goodbye” to Google Wave, and “where to now” for the NBN.

But take another look: a great many companies have learned that it’s best to respond quickly to someone complaining about a product or service – usually with a #Bad(company name) hashtag. Otherwise, you could find yourself the subject not of one random Tweet, but thousands of damaging messages. That’s where Australian cloud-based customer contact provide IPscape is coming from. A Series of Tubes talked to CEO Simon Bourke about the benefits of adding Twitter to your list of customer service channels – and how to avoid alienating customers when the Fail Whale arrives.

In our regular chat with Stilgherrian, A Series of Tubes discusses the new Pacific Fibre project, the release of the NBN maps, and how bad editorial decisions in mainstream media help drive the audience to Internet outlets.

And in the world of Google, technology and privacy, the leaky nature of WiFi networks has been brought to a very wide audience. A Series of Tubes talks to Steve Chung, consultant at Ruckus Wireless, about WiFi privacy – and about how network professionals need to tread carefully when using tools such as sniffers.

In my regular chat with Stilgherrian, we wander around the new world of Open Government, the Privacy Commissioner’s findings on the Google StreetView-WiFi incident, and how the Pirate Party fell at the first hurdle.

In A Series of Tubes #111, I talk to James Spenceley and David Spence in an interview recorded before the world went pear-shaped. Fortunately, the things they had to say are still current today! We talk about the float of Vocus and the changes taking place in the Australian bandwidth market.

And in my once-again soon-to-be-regular chat with Stilgherrian, we talk about the now-infamous “Ozlog” stories (just how much will the government try to log?), Google’s WiFi debacle, and the many misinterpretations of the OECD’s latest round of broadband penetration data (can journalists be taught about statistical error margins?).

Welcome back to A Series of Tubes!

And he’s got a mission: to deliver outsourcing services to SMEs on a national scale, with a focus on regional businesses. That gives Kazacos strong views on what his customers need – and what the NBN has to do with SMEs.

In our regular chat with Stilgherrian, Tubes talks Google and censorship, China and censorship, censorship and Conroy – and the comment-spam attack on Senator Steve Fielding.

That question is on the mind of Professor Rod Tucker, telecommunications luminary and head of IBES, the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society at the University of Melbourne. Tubes talks to Tucker about IBES – its research, and its applications test bed.

But will we be able to make the NBN worth the prices that were announced last week in Tasmania? It depends – so in this week’s regular chat with Stilgherrian, we try to silence to “too expensive” complainers, as well as taking a look at why the NBN Implementation Study is still missing from the public sphere, and we celebrate 25 years of the dotcom era.

Note from Chirgwin: A connection problem during the Rod Tucker interview means we have a short section of high noise at around the five-minute mark. My apologies!

And in our regular chat with Stilgherrian, Tubes looks at the NBN Co legislation, at Kate Lundy’s alternative proposal for the Internet filter, and we ask what can be done about people using Facebook for denigration and hate.

This week, A Series of Tubes explores both the physics and the commercialisation. Quintessence Labs’ founder and CEO, Vikram Sharma, talks about the company’s work with RMIT on second-generation quantum cryptography devices. He hopes the equipment will one day shrink to “the size of a broadband modem”.

And Tubes talks to Stilgherrian about the Google Buzz publicity and privacy “fubar”, Telstra’s 42 Mbps moves, wireless in Swindon, and the complex interaction between censorship, the Internet, and TV news.

In Sydney this week for the APAN conference, Jan Meijer took time to give A Series of Tubes his views on identity.

And in a week that saw Anonymous decide that democracy is best defended by shutting off citizens’ Web access to their government, Stilgherrian also talks about Vividwireless’ ambitious plans to spread its 4G wireless service to the major mainland capitals.