DENVER - IPv6 appears to have found a new killer app: business continuity.

Next year will see one more regional Internet registry run out of IPv4 addresses, but 2012 will be more of a year to prepare for the inevitable shift to IPv6 than an Internet doomsday, according to networking experts.

Support for IPv6 has grown by almost 20 times in the past year by one measure, but most websites still can't be reached without IPv4, the current Internet Protocol, which is near running out of unclaimed addresses.

Infoblox will unveil on Monday a new type of IP appliance aimed at its largest customers, which are increasingly delegating the management of critical network services to business units but want the IT department to monitor overall network performance.

The nation's largest telecom carriers, content providers, hardware suppliers and software vendors will be on the edge of their seats tonight for the start of World IPv6 Day, which is the most-anticipated 24 hours the tech industry has seen since fears of the Y2K bug dominated New Year's Eve in 1999.

Boutique distributor, Transition Systems, is gearing up for a strong 2011 on the back of market trends that will directly benefit its stable of vendors.

In another sign that DNS operations are migrating into the cloud, industry leader Neustar will announce on Tuesday a new managed service that allows companies to outsource all of their internal DNS and related network address management functions that run on Infoblox appliances.

Distribution Central has added 33 new staff across its business units during the current financial year.