At last

[Karl Larsen]

    I wanted to test the key I put in pgpMIT so using seahorse I find 
that "Find Remote Keys" will go out on the Internet and try to match and 
get key data for the key ID you give it from the remote sites. There are 
two listed.

    I looked for my new key but it was not to be found. I tried some 
other peoples key and they could not be found either. I have found my 
own this way in weeks past.

    Why is it not working now? I am an Electrical Engineer and I can 
visualize what pgpMIT must have in a hardware sense. For sure it has a 
computer with a database which is backed up very well to other computers 
at MIT. The problem is some hardware that was hand made or perhaps 
software written on another computer that can be reached by the 
Internet. It has to have handshake system that takes data at unknown 
speed and stores it for a short time. It has to have logic that knows 
what the input must be, and when it is done. Also it checks the data it 
saved and if it passes it tells the sender it is done.

    Another program is needed to also listen to the Internet for a 
person wanting to check/get the public key of someone. This data is 
shorter like 8 bytes and can be selected in that way. There are problems 
however with selecting a path based on data length alone. In any case 
this data is sent to the main computer database and the proper data 
withdrawn and sent to the remote computer connected to it. There is a 
rats-nest of loops in such a device and I bet it fails a lot of the 
time. It gets a lot of garbled data input from the world and that does 
the trick.

    At this moment I can't reach this server with my seahorse and I know 
at least in concept why.


Karl

-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
   PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7