A managed class peer networking framework and associated object-oriented application programming interfaces are presented. An application uses the framework API to communicate with the various peer networking subsystem interfaces. These subsystems utilize lower level Win32 interfaces and services to provide access to the group database, security, and data transfer to other machines. Managed classes are provided for the peer name, identity, cloud, invitation, group, policy, data store, peer and record collections, peer, and record classes. Peer name resolution objects and record search objects are also provided. The peer networking framework of the present invention is particularly applicable to Microsoft's .NET Framework.