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In computer networking, ad-hoc is a network connection method which is most often associated with wireless devices. The connection is established for the duration of one session and requires no base station. Instead, devices discover others within range to form a network for those computers. Devices may search for target nodes that are out of range by flooding the network with broadcasts that are forwarded by each node. Connections are possible over multiple nodes (multihop ad-hoc network). Routing protocols then provide stable connections even if nodes are moving around. Both Nintendo's DS and Sony's PlayStation Portable use Ad-Hoc connections for wireless multiplayer gaming.

See IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth, or ultra-wide band. The alternative is infrastructure, with a base station that manages the network for its range.

The term ad-hoc network can also refer to an independent basic service set (IBSS).

A sensor network is a computer network of many, spatially distributed devices using sensors to monitor conditions at different locations, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants. Usually these devices are small and inexpensive, so that they can be produced and deployed in large numbers, and so their resources in terms of energy, memory, computational speed and bandwidth are severely constrained. Each device is equipped with a radio transceiver, a small microcontroller, and an energy source, usually a battery. The devices use each other to transport data to a monitoring computer.

Sensor networks involve three areas: sensing, communications, and computation (hardware, software, algorithms). Very useful technologies are wireless database technology such as queries, used in a wireless sensor network, and network technology to communicate with other sensors, especially multihop routing protocols. For example, ZigBee is a wireless protocol used by Motorola in home control systems.