Is there a way to use processors on a network to attack a certain CPU intensive task? I am on a school network and the instructor and I are generating rainbow tables. At the current rate of a 3.0 P4 running at 100% non-stop it will take 6 months to complete. Is there anyway to use more than one computer on the network to use it's processor to decrease the time needed to generate the tables?

This may be the wrong forum for this question.

To the best of my knowledge; computers on a network share bandwidth/information and not processor usage.

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Sure, it's called parallel processing.

CETI uses it in a similar way that you describe, and so do many medical research departmens. They give you a program free of charge and it cuts into your CPU power a slight bit and uses it to crunch the numbers that they send you. Then, your computer sends the processed information back to the parent computer, which assembles it again.

CETI used this to crunch the huge amounts of data they gather in a few months, I believe. They claimed that doing the same task with a Deep Blue supercomputer would've taken about 40 years.

Research it a bit. Multi-proc number crunchers are out there.