Access and retrieval of meteorological and oceanographic data from heterogeneous sources in a distributed system presents many issues. There are a number of features of the TEDServices system that illustrate active network management for such data. There is a self-aware or intelligent aspect with respect to the mechanisms for shutdown, data ordering, and propagation of data orders. Intelligent cache management and collaborative application sharing process are other features of the active network management. Additionally a very important capability is the implementation of resumable object streams, which allows either the client or server side of a request to lose network connection, regain it, and the request will continue where it left off. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1123–1138, 2007.