Instruments and sensors and their accompanying actuators are essential to the conduct of scientific research. In many cases they provide observations in electronic format and can be connected to computer networks with varying degrees of remote interactivity. These devices vary in their architectures and type of data they capture and may generate data at various rates. In this paper we present an overview of the design goals and initial implementation of the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA), a framework for making instruments and sensors network accessible in a standards-based, uniform way, and for interacting remotely with instruments and the data they produce. Some of the issues CIMA addresses include: flexibility in network transport, efficient and high throughput data transport, the availability (or lack of) computational, storage and networking resources at the instrument or sensor platform, evolution of instrument design, and reuse of data acquisition and processing codes.