We discuss how computations, in computer algebra, that have massive resource requirements, can be distributed and processed in parallel on a network of workstations or on a large scale network like the internet. We discuss the traditional as well a a "divide and be conquered" model for massively distributed computations and analyze their viability in a computer algebra setting. We stress the major problems and propose solutions for some of them.
In order to address the arising software problems, we present a framework for implementing problem-specific distribution servers. For each concrete application only minimal code is needed to complement the generic framework in order to enable large-scale distributed processing of the application.