With the era of freely available IPv4 addresses nearing its end , I'm pleased to see that 2012 appears to be the year when the IPv6 internet will finally reach maturity and launch into wide-scale commercial use. For more than a decade, the groundwork for the migration to version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6) has been built, with changes to operating systems, client and server software, routers, and internet backbone networks. To-date, however, the availability of IPv6 content and end users has remained slim with few websites being available over IPv6 and with just over 0.5% of global internet users having IPv6 connectivity that their machines will elect to use .  \r\n I'm optimistic that IPv6 adoption is on the verge of gaining real traction, and the upcoming World IPv6 Launch event on June 6 will be a milestone. As part of World IPv6 Launch, many large websites (including quite a few Akamai customer sites) are permanently enabling access over IPv6.…