some testing on my Entropy key

[Guillaume ROMAGNY]

Hello Rob,


Le 19/12/2010 15:13, Rob Kendrick a écrit :

> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 02:21:29PM +0100, Guillaume Romagny wrote:
>
>> I am part of CAcert.org and I am doing some testing on the entropy key.
>>
>> you can have a look there (look for ekey or entropy key)
>> http://www.cacert.at/cgi-bin/rngresults
>>
>> The tests are based on diehard.
>>
>> The website is maintained by Philipp G. (pg @ futureware . at)
>>
>> The background of the story is we are looking for a simple fast enough
>> and reliable generator the day we have to renew the CAcert.org root
>> certificates.
> Fun!  Thanks for the link.  It's nice to see somewhere that actually
> catalogues this stuff, so it's not just the vendor's say so for its
> quality.  It's also nice to see that for all the hardware generators I
> could spot on that list, the Entropy Key has the heighest shanons of
> entropy per byte :)
>

I am not sure about the sorting. Probably, the lastest sample with
7.999999 is put on the top of the list. Only Philipp can tell.

> Couple of points though: the data seems to be full of lots of...
> detritus.  (such as broken links, old stuff with no description, etc).
>

That's a test system and also my testing tool. Philipp has not much time
to clean up the website (and my mess)

You have plenty of "randomsound" test, we made a X509 RSA key generation
with this system.

> Also; you list multiple prices for the Entropy Key!
>

Sorry for this... you know I have to convert pounds to euros to USD...
And I don't have an admin access to correct the website !

One point : I have a better random data quality with the default setup
"SetOutputToKernel(7)" because putting "8" or getting random data
directly into a file gives lesser quality. The consequence is
/dev/urandom is 16 kB/s (7) instead of 24 kB/s (8). But it is fine for
my purpose. I can buy a second Entropy key if need to improve the data rate.

Generator                                            
Entropy key + /dev/urandom shannon config = 7 160MB  sample

Vendor
Simtec   

Speed
16600 B/s   

Price
66 USD   

Entropy (->8)
7.999999   

Birthday Spacing
0.185431   

Matrix Ranks
0.679   

6x8 Matrix Ranks
0.385   

Minimum Distance Test
0.602907

Random Spheres Test
0.319319

The Sqeeze Test
0.608268

Overlapping Sums Test
0.362216

Submission YYYY-MM
2010-12

note : there is one wrong "entropy key" sample in the list, my DSL line
cut the transfer.

Best regards,

Guillaume