Currently, global registries, such as ones offered by Microsoft Corporation (uddi.microsoft.com) or Hewlett Packard Corporation (uddi.hp.com), are used to register services offered by or desired by networked devices. Unfortunately, these registries are highly centralized and designed to be repositories for long-lived services, and thus are not amenable to operation of mobile devices, such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants, and other devices whose network address may change frequently as they move in and out of various local network environments. Moreover, when such mobile devices form ad hoc networks, access to the centralized repositories may not be available. To address these issues, devices of a local network may be configured to dynamically select a local master, from among devices attached to the local network and based on characteristics of the devices, where the selected device operates a registry for the local network.