Awareness Information in Wide Area Networks Michael Koch, Daniel K¨ ohler, Martin B¨ urger Institut f¨ ur Informatik, Technische Universit¨ at M ¨ unchen, Germany Abstract: The collaborative editing of documents by teams that are distributed over many locations is a very common task nowadays. Consequently, it is a primary requirement to create editors that support that task. These group editors should be usable seamlessly in local area networks (LANs), in wide area networks (WANs) and with mobile computers. In this article we want to draw attention to the implications those different environments have on providing awareness information. We also present the solution we choose for our group editor environment I RIS. Workpaper, March 1997 Applied Informatics and Distributed Systems Group, Department of Informatics, Technische Universit"at M"unchen, Germany 1 Introduction Nowadays working groups are often distributed and the group members are spread over several departments or companies. Increasing network availability in the last decade has been a major breakthrough enabling such distributed group work using the computer and networking technologies. Traditionally caused, the main focus of computer support for group work lies in LAN environments, as they are widely in- stalled within organizations. In the last years WAN environments became more and more important, triggered by the increase of international companies working in a world-wide manner with departments located distantly. The need for communica- tion stays the same as within a local work group, but the ability to arrange meetings with physical proximity is often missing. Generally speaking, to enable a separated group of co-workers to collaborate, they need to coordinate themselves (Malone and Crowston, 1994). Coordination implies the need for communication among the co-workers. Communication in- cludes face-to-face meetings and phone calls, as well as the exchange of awareness information, the meta-information necessary to enable cooperation.