Evolving Web Could Turn Into The Everynet; INTERNET; Networks spread their way from cell phones to airplanes to battlefields.(SERIES: INNOVATIONS)(IBD SPECIAL REPORT)

Byline: DONNA HOWELL

Coming soon to tech buffs: really high-tech houses, smarter cell phones and everyday objects linked to the Internet.

People will be able to do more things, more easily, with more online devices the next several years. What's paving the way? New standards that change the Internet will help. So will the boom in broadband and wireless.

"We've been talking a long time about the (proverbial) Web-enabled refrigerator or toaster," said Joerg Bertholdt, a marketing director at embedded software maker Wind River Systems Inc. in Alameda, Calif.

But it's impractical now to have a home network with much more than PCs and laptops. "You'd have to have a degree in network administration," said Bertholdt.

That will change. A new version of the Internet's operating system, IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), lets just about anything get its own numbered online address. It promises to …