"Looking Ahead"

Vinton Cerf, writing for CRN magazine, predicts that the number of Internet-enabled devices will swell dramatically between 2006 and 2010, and notes as examples initiatives in the Netherlands and Japan to develop Internet-enabled cars that use the Internet to connect and interconnect instruments and devices. In this scenario, sensors will supply data about devices' operations to cars, and also transmit geo-positioning information to devices to make devices aware of their physical positions, an innovation that could lead to new types of services.

The Interplanetary Network is another innovative, ongoing project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that is intended to extend the Internet into the solar system, in part by designing and standardizing an architecture for deep-space communication. Protocols are being developed to support interactions between assets in deep space and Earth-based Internet sources.

Approaching 2010, Cerf predicts that there will be some 2.2 billion Internet users and between 5 billion to 20 billion connected devices, which means that this huge system will demand IPv6 in order to manage an Internet between three and 15 times as large as today's telephone system. Voice and perhaps gesture will be used to interact with technology, and most devices will be controllable through remote servers.
(http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/35832.asp)