The International Workshop on "The Internet Challenge: Technology and Applications" is the fifth in a successful series of workshops that were established by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Technische Universitat Berlin. The goal of those workshops is to bring together researchers from both universities in order to exchange research results achieved in common projects of the two partner universities or to present interesting new work that might lead to new cooperation. The series of workshops started in 1990 with the "International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence" and was continued with the "International Workshop on Advanced Software Technology" in 1994. Both workshops have been hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In 1998 the third workshop took place in Berlin. This "International Workshop on Communication Based Systems" was essentially based on results from the Graduiertenkolleg on Communication Based systems that was funded by the German Research Society (DFG) from 1991 to 2000. The fourth "International Workshop on Robotics and its Applications" was held in Shanghai in 2000 supported by VDIIVDE-GMA and GI.