[29629] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: PGP kerserver infrastructure
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Francis)
Fri Jun 30 15:11:31 2000
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<Pine.LNX.4.21.QNWS_2.0006301104550.9254-100000@thetis.deor.org>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:06:22 -0700
To: "L. Sassaman" <rabbi@quickie.net>,
"Eric M. Carroll" <eric.carroll@acm.org>
From: Peter Francis <peter@softaware.com>
Cc: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>, John Fraizer <nanog@EnterZone.Net>,
nanog@merit.edu, pgp-keyserver-folk@flame.org,
"Neil J. McRae" <neil@domino.org>
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Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
We are currently running a globally load balanced network with dedicated servers available in 15 (and rising) locations in the US and Europe. We would be happy to run a number of keyservers on our network.
We are using the Foundry ServerIron's global server load balancing which uses a TCP syn/ack based round trip time metric to direct a client to the "closest" site.
Does the key-service answer on a specific TCP port?
If this sounds feasible please point us at info on how to set up a key-server.
Thanks,
Peter Francis Cerrato
Sr. Network Engineer
SoftAware Networks
At 11:13 AM -0700 6/30/00, L. Sassaman wrote:
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>On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, Eric M. Carroll wrote:
>
>> The Internet has been uniquely successful in introducing a namespace, a
>> hierarchical delegation system, and a root system. We use this system to
>> locate many services. One common one is email service. We use it
>> ubiquitously. Noone argues about the "EMail Service Resource Location
>> Protocol". We use the DNS. End of discussion. Other examples exist, such as
>> http. Each has a slightly different way to interface to the DNS, but at
>> least they are defined.
>
>Just to restate here:
>
>Currently, *all* servers serve *all* keys. Unlike an X.500 directory, it
>is very difficult to segment PGP keys into directories. How would one do
>this? Using DNS? Which domain would one choose to use for cataloging the
>keys? (ex.: My key has multiple email addresses, including quickie.net and
>pgp.com. Which domain would it be under?)
>
>It is the theory that one keyserver (provided it has 100% uptime, and 100%
>reliable synchronization with the rest of the servers) is sufficient for a
>person using the PGP Keyserver network. Each server is assumed to hold the
>entire world's keys.
>
>Multiple servers only exist for redundancy and performance benefits.
>
>Is this the best method? Probably not. There have been numerous proposals,
>for segmenting the public key collection, but none have been
>favored. Given sufficient drive space, this doesn't seem to be a big
>problem, however.
>
>Since the keyserver network could be viewed as simply one server, since
>each is a mirror of the rest, the only thing we need to focus on if we are
>to use the current model is how to send the user requesting a key to the
>closest, fastest keyserver. Directory structures don't play into this.
>
>
>- --Len.
>
>__
>
>L. Sassaman
>
>System Administrator |
>Technology Consultant | "Common sense is wrong."
>icq.. 10735603 |
>pgp.. finger://ns.quickie.net/rabbi | --Practical C Programming
>
>
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