ABSTRACT The purpose of the Workshop that comprises a series of lecture presentations and laboratory hands-on exercises is to teach how the automation of a typical physics laboratory can be improved by making use of features embodied in the Internet and the Java programming environment. During the Workshop a distributed system will be built in stages, consisting of PCs interconnected through a Local Area Network and interacting with a variety of measurement and data acquisition equipment. These equipments are implemented as embedded systems using microcontrollers and are connected to the network through small dedicated, programmable Network Interface Computers (NICs). The PCs will act as operator consoles allowing access to the equipment through suitably designed graphical user interfaces (GUIs). All programmes will be implemented in Java and a database will provide necessary information on the distributed equipment. Only freely available public domain software tools will be used. At the end of the Workshop the participants will be provided with a CDROM containing all presentation material and software.