We investigate the minimal resources that are required in the local implementation of non-local quantum gates in a distributed quantum computer. Both classical communication requirements and entanglement consumption are investigated. We present general statements on the minimal resource requirements and present optimal procedures for a number of important gates, including CNOT and Toffoli gates. We show that one bit of classical communication in each direction is both necessary and sufficient for the non-local implementation of the quantum CNOT, while in general two bits in each direction is required for the implementation of a general two bit quantum gate. In particular, the state-swapper requires this maximum classical communication overhead. Extensions of these ideas to multi-party gates are presented.