A brief comparison of email encryption protocols

[Perry E. Metzger]

Derek Atkins writes:
> > 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!

Yes, but we have to assume that the need for central key servers would
go away if we had a way of distributing the data around, which would
reduce the problem substantially...

> 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.

By the way, a lot of this discussion should probably also be taking
place on SPKI.

Perry