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It seems so simple, Home networking is the linking and sharing of computer products in your home so that you have the same kind of capability you have in the office, right? Wrong! Home Networking is so much more, but only if consumer electronics manufacturer's do something about it before Microsoft, Intel, 3COM, Sun and Cisco force corporate modeled LAN's into our homes. It made sense in the office, but it makes no sense in our home. Let me explain what I want to see home networking become.

First, I want my home network to provide me with access to my kids PC and them to my printer, and I do want all of us to share my modem out to the Internet (as long as it does not slow down my babes.com site). But, I also want my home network to let me know when someone is at my front door and I want to be told if there are problems with the appliances like smoke detectors and carbon monoxide around my home. I want my home network to monitor the status of my lights and turn off the ones that the kids left on or don't need to be on anymore. And why do my lights come on full bright in the middle of the night, I want them to dim slowly and then dim to off as I leave the room. You see, I don't just merely want to share files and printers, I want some smart stuff going on here. I want my home network to alert me, protect me, work for me and save me money. Is this too much to ask?

I want my home network to be the central nervous system of my home. I want my appliances to communicate with the General Electric (website) factory to alert them to when my appliance might be over working, you see I want my Sprint PCS phone to tell me that I left my lights on or that I forgot to turn the curling iron off or set the alarm on my house as I am driving away for the weekend or that we left the air-conditioner on. It would be nice if my home network would do all of these things reliably. So who is thinking all these lines? From I read, there are not too many companies that are even giving this much attention to the opportunity. I expect this to change and you can expect to see SMART Corporation leading the way.

Home networks as you are getting to know them must change and evolve to include appliances, light switches, audio and video products, security systems, you name it. I see no reason that a home network can not include these capabilities. Let's have a little imagination here. Put a little extra effort into that AutoPC and let me connect to my home and monitor its status while I am away, let me know who is at my front door while I am at the office late at night. It seems like tunnel vision for some of these companies when it comes to new markets. We can always hope some smart company will have the foresight to make their home networking products interoperable with existing systems in the home. What do you think?