A brief comparison of email encryption protocols

[Derek Atkins]

> is a URL just too big?  My sigs are already several lines long.  E.g.,
> 
> Key: ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/cme/cme.asc

IMHO, yes.  Consider for a minute: there are currently about 20000 PGP
keys on the public keyservers.  There are about 30000 signatures on
those keys.  The keyrings are already 8MB or more.

Now, consider adding a URL to every signature.  Lets even use your
URL, which is 35 characters long (and lets not even count the NULL or
length byte).  Adding this URL to 30000 signatures would add 1050000
bytes, or just over 1MB.  This is an increase in 12% of the keyrings!

On the other hand, using my method and your "URL" (clark.net) would
add only 10 bytes per sig, or 300k.  This is only a 4% increase.

-derek