The 1-Wire bus is a cheap low-speed bus for devices like weather sensors, access control, etc. It can be attached to your system via serial, USB, I2C, and other interfaces.

OWserver arbitrates access to the 1-Wire bus from multiple client processes. The physical bus is usually connected to a serial or USB port, and other processes connect to owserver over network sockets (tcp port). Communication can be local or over a network.