A residential gateway connects an Internet connection to an in-home network that has at least one residential device connected to the residential gateway. The residential gateway has software that receives control parameters from a control server via the Internet connection. The control server determines the control parameters from operational information of the residential device and relevant control information accessed from an information server on the Internet. The software causes the residential gateway to communicate with the residential device to provide control of the residential device based on the received control parameters. In a particular implementation, the residential device is a home irrigation system connected to the residential gateway via a wireless interface and the information server is a weather station server storing climatic information from a plurality of weather stations.