The Internet has the potential to enhance collaboration among researchers by facilitating rapid dispersal of information and the coordination of numerous, complex, real-time interactions. The most frequently used applications of the Internet support asynchronous transfer of static text files and images from large publicly available databases. However, single-user access to static information is a small component of the possible spectrum of activity.

A growing number of telemedicine and telemicroscopy projects allow researchers to control experimental equipment remotely in real-time. For telemicroscopy, the instrument operators or local researchers give control of the instrument to the remote investigator. Investigators examine data they have generated themselves, rather than accessing community-held data resources. Even though the process is more interactive than static file transfer, applications for remote equipment access are not totally interactive, as the flow of information is typically unidirectional.