Today there are two popular paradigms emerging for Internet applications: cloud computing and peer-to-peer. Cloud computing allows all applications to reside in few computers that are accessed by users as and when needed. In peer-to-peer systems each computer or node accesses every other computer on the internet by finding the best path through other nodes. The fundamental challenge is to learn how the peer-to-peer paradigm can be used to unite the surplus computing, storage, and bandwidth resources in computing devices distributed around the world in a way that creates a coherent, shared computing and information platform. The implications of doing so would be far reaching: the internet and the resources of all computers connected to it would effectively function as one large computer available to any user, anywhere, any time, all having access to limitless computational and storage capabilities.