A home network system has a home appliance, a portable terminal to receive a control command associated with the home appliance, and an access point to allow the home appliance or the portable terminal to be connected to a wide area network (WAN), wherein the access point notifies the home appliance of the connection of the portable terminal if the portable terminal connects to the access point, so that the home application detects that a user returns home and performs a certain operation as a user connects to the access point when returning home.