The Network Attack

How
Write a screen saver or background program that does solves a small part of the problem.  Write a web page encoraging people to download.  Get publicity.  Wait for people to run program.  Answers will come in.

Does it work?
All of the modern challenges have been solved using this approach.  Contests Won

Challenge Organization Time Money
DES-II-1 distributed.net 39 days $5,000
DES-II-2 eff.org 2.5 days $10,000
DES-III both 22.25 hours $10,000

How much Computing Power is Used

Computing Power using on the RC5 challenge by distributed.net (http://www.distributed.net/statistics/stats.html)

Processor Type
Speed Keys/Sec
Number of Procs
Benchmark CPU
X86
79,516,795,850
108,186
PII/266
PPC
3,276,5413,695
4,994
604e/200
Sparc
2,253,428,660
5,577
Ultra2/200
Total
86,158,395,455
117,220
PII/200

Who does this?
People from almost every nation I know of, including 8 in Iceland, 18 in Kazakhstan, and 2 in Afgahnistan.