Volunteer Computing is a kind of distributed computing that harnesses the aggregated spare computing resources of volunteer devices. It provides a cheaper and greener alternative computing infrastructure that can complement the dedicated, centralized, and expensive data centres. The aggregated idle computing resources of devices ranging from desktop computers to routers and smart TVs are being utilized to provide the much needed computing infrastructure for compute intensive tasks such as scientific simulations and big data analysis. However, the use of Volunteer Computing is still dominated by scientific applications and only a very small fraction of the potential volunteer nodes are participating. This article provides a comprehensive survey of Volunteer Computing, covering key technical and operational issues such as security, task distribution, resource management, and incentive models. The article also presents a taxonomy of Volunteer Computing systems, together with discussions of the characteristics of specific systems in each category. To harness the full potentials of Volunteer Computing and make it a reliable alternative computing infrastructure for general applications, we need to improve the existing techniques and device new mechanisms. Thus, this article also sheds light on important issues regarding the future research and development of Volunteer Computing systems with the aim of making them a viable alternative computing infrastructure.

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