In Pictures: Top 25 network and IT industry stories of 2012

IPv6 goes prime time

World IPv6 Launch Day event in early June resulted in a rise in IPv6 traffic -- including Web and email -- to a new peak as expected. But ISPs said the bigger story was the steady increase in IPv6 traffic that occurred in the months leading up to the event, which they anticipate will continue for the rest of 2012. Coordinated by the Internet Society, World IPv6 Launch Day was a kick-off event for more than 50 access network providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable and 3,000 websites -- including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Bing -- to begin permanently supporting IPv6 for their customers. IPv6 is an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, known as IPv4 (by Carolyn Duffy Marsan).