A web-enabled microcontroller device is provided with both web server functions (310) and generic control and monitoring functions (312). The web-enabled microcontroller device may be embedded in domestic, commercial and industrial hardware. Integrated software for remotely controlling hardware by means of the microcontroller device combines control application code (312) and HTTP server code (310). One implementation of the microcontroller device has a microprocessor coupled to a physical communications unit, a ROM and a RAM. The protocol stack (314) associated with the HTTP server may be permanently coded into the ROM or loaded into the RAM as required. In another implementation, the physical communications unit includes a digital signal processor and a wireless access unit, thereby providing a web-enabled digital wireless access device. In the wireless implementation, the processing of the wireless access physical layer (302) is performed by the digital signal processor and the higher layer processing (310, 312, 314) is performed on the microprocessor.