Ten years ago, one of the biggest hits at a major trade show on new network technology was the Internet Toaster. By typing a command on a networked computer anywhere in the world, you could turn the modified Sunbeam Deluxe on and off, or have the toast pop up.

The Internet was still small back then, with a mere 300,000 computers online. But it was growing like a weed. And one of the big jokes was that we would soon be putting our toasters, microwave ovens and refrigerators on the Net. The joke was all the funnier because nobody could quite figure out why this kind of connectivity for household appliances would be desirable: we just knew that networked appliances would be part of our collective future.

Connecting a toaster to the Internet was not easy. For starters, the toaster needed a computer powerful enough to "speak" the so-called Internet Protocol-the digital standard that allows computers on the Net to communicate with one another. The contraption's creators-Internet pioneers John Romkey and Simon Hackett-linked their toaster to a power switch that was in turn hooked to the printer port of a Net-connected laptop computer. Romkey and Hackett tinkered for a year to get it to work.

Fast-forward a decade. More than 300 million computers are connected to the Internet-but there aren't many more household appliances than there were back when the Internet Toaster debuted. The inexpensive microcontrollers that are typically found in microwave ovens and fancy toasters lack the power to implement the Internet Protocol and therefore cannot practically go online.