Finding the factorization of a polynomial over a finite field is of interest for many applications in computer algebra, coding theory,

cryptography and computat ional number theory. Major improvements have been made in the polynomial factori zation problem both in theory and in practice. From a theoretical point of view, asymptotically faster algorithms have been proposed. However, these advances ar e more striking in practice where variants of the asymptotically fastest algorit hms allow us to factor polynomials over finite fields in reasonable amounts of t ime that were unassailable some years ago. Polynomial factorization over finite fields is used as a subproblem in algorithms for factoring polynomials over the integers, for constructing cyclic redundancy codes and BCH codes, for designing public key cryptosystems, and for computing the number of points on Elliptic cur ves.