Brocade this week released new software for its application delivery controllers that gives users greater visibility into performance, and enhances IPv6 communications.

Cisco this week expanded its smart grid portfolio for utilities with a reference architecture, products and services intended to modernize the electric grid.

Internode has become the first Australian broadband provider to make IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) available by default for new customers.

Several of the world's largest ISPs and websites have committed to permanently enabling IPv6 -- the next-generation Internet Protocol -- on their products and services starting June 6, 2012.

2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s, when this network-of-networks stopped being a research project and became an engine of economic growth.

A dozen of the world's largest Internet companies - including Facebook, Google and Comcast - have committed to June 6, as the start date for their production deployments of IPv6, an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

If your IPv6 strategy is to delay implementation as long as you can, you still must address IPv6 security concerns right now.

The world is almost out of IP addresses--or at least it's almost out of the IPv4 addresses that IT admins and users are most familiar with. Fortunately, IPv6 has been developed to exponentially expand the pool of available IP addresses while also providing a few other benefits.

The most popular Web sites are under increasing pressure to add support for IPv6, a long-anticipated upgrade to IPv4, the Internet's main communications protocol.