This book presents the latest research findings, innovative research results, methods and development techniques related to P2P, grid, cloud and Internet computing from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It also reveals the synergies among such large-scale computing paradigms. P2P, grid, cloud and Internet computing technologies have rapidly become established as breakthrough paradigms for solving complex problems by enabling aggregation and sharing of an increasing variety of distributed computational resources at large scale.

Grid computing originated as a paradigm for high-performance computing, as an alternative to expensive supercomputers through different forms of large-scale distributed computing. P2P computing emerged as a new paradigm after client–server and web-based computing and has proved useful in the development of social networking, B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), B2G (business to government), and B2E (business to employee). Cloud computing has been defined as a “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing are determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits,” and it has fast become a computing paradigm with applicability and adoption in all application domains and which provides utility computing at a large scale. Lastly, Internet computing is the basis of any large-scale distributed computing paradigms; it has developed into a vast area of flourishing fields with enormous impact on today’s information societies, and serving as a universal platform comprising a large variety of computing forms such as grid, P2P, cloud and mobile computing.