Recent developments in mobile communication and small computing devices have had a tremendous impact on our societies. They have brought the dream of ubiquitous computing and communication closer to reality. In the near future the communication and computing devices will enable mass-market scale ubiquitous services and applications. The main challenge will be software that fulfils the needs of personalized, ambient-aware services and applications usable anywhere, anytime. A key enabler for this vision is personal networking supporting the communication in different kinds of environments: in personal domain, in ad-hoc communities, in digital home, in networks without any infrastructure as well as in networks with operator-based infrastructures.
