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Talking To Your Fridge? You Need In-House Broadband Over Powerline: Page 10 of 10

Just imagine a house equipped with an intelligent IP-addressable refrigerator, washing machine and dryer, dishwasher, television set, stereo, furnace and central air conditioner. Imagine the software in those intelligent devices being updated via an in-house BPL connection perhaps to access BPL (or DSL, PON, cable modem, WiMax or satellite) to the Internet. Imagine routine monitoring scans and automatic fixes for operational bugs. Imagine the manufacturers' technical support staffs being able to anticipate troubles, diagnose them and even fix many of them remotely, perhaps even before you are aware of them.

Imagine your clothes dryer calling your cell phone to alert you via an SMS message when the towels are dry. Imagine driving out of the parking garage at work and calling your oven to preheat it to 350 degrees so that you can pop that roast in just as soon as you get home. Imagine calling your intelligent IP-addressable steam iron from your cell phone while in transit to the airport for a Hawaiian vacation, just to make sure you turned it off and unplugged it.

Well, that last may be a bit of a stretch, but maybe not. One side benefit of this intelligent, networked appliance scenario is that it will give IPv6 a real boost. After all, IPv4 supports only 4,294,967,296 addresses, and that's not nearly enough to cover the extra pressure from Kenmore, KitchenAid, Maytag, Whirlpool and the like.