The home network is one of the emerging areas from the last century. However, the growth of the home network market is stationary at present. This paper describes the limitations of the home network system and the requirements for overcoming the current limitations. Also described is a new home network service system known as COWS and its easy installation and scalable operation. COWS consists of power consumption monitor and control devices along with a service server that is a complementary combination of Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) and web services. A home network system has a dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, and scalable topology. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been proposed as a solution that satisfies the requirement of a home network, and OSGi and web services are two successful SOA-based frameworks. An included service server has a flexible architecture that consists of a core and extendable service packages. A power consumption monitor and control function provides useful context information for activity-based context-aware services and optimizes the power consumption. The system can be installed easily into existing and new houses to solve the current barrier of the popularization of home network services.
