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To: Gregory Sutter <gsutter@zer0.org>
From: Mark Murray <markm@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 22 Oct 2003 13:10:09 PDT."
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cc: security@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: hardware crypto and SSL? 
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Gregory Sutter writes:
> On 2003-10-21 20:27 -0700, Bill Swingle <unfurl@dub.net> wrote:
> > Is anyone successfully using some sort of hardware crypto solution to
> > combat the overhead of SSL in http transactions? I'd love to hear
> > anything good or bad about this.
> 
> Alteon and F5, among others, both make SSL acceleration appliances.
> I'm sure a device like this would greatly speed the processing of
> your HTTPS transactions.  Good stuff.

You will most likely not notice hardware encryption speedup (much)
on a client machine if all you are doing is the usual 'net surfing.
Where a hardware crypto unit _really_ shines is in a server,
particularly a heavily loaded one, and they are _brilliant_ if they
have BIGNUM units to make D-H, RSA, DSA etc faster.

If you are a heavy consumer of crypto, and your box is bottlenecked
in the CPU, then a hardware crypto unit will be of great use to
you.

M
--
Mark Murray
iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH