Timings for random

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Hal!

On Sat, 28 Jan 2017 23:19:32 -0800
Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:

> gem at rellim.com said:
> > rand() and RAND_pseudo_rand() are not random, just psuedo random,
> > thus not for NTP.  
> 
> Do you think fuzzing needs cryptographically strong randomness?

You are asking the wrong guy.  I'm not sure we need any fuzzing.

> I timed RAND_pseudo_bytes() rather than RAND_bytes() because I didn't
> want to get mixed up with not enough randomness and it seemed good
> enough for what we needed.

You can't run out of randomness with RAND_bytes().  And as your
later tests showed, they had different performance.

> > What about the OpenSSL RAND_bytes()?   
> 
> It's slightly faster than RAND_pseudo_bytes()  :)  ??

Dunno, the point is that it is actually random.

> The man page says both will return 1 if the bytes generated are 
> cryptographically strong.  I wasn't able to use up the system
> entropy.  Seems suspicious.

Modern Linux will no run out of entropy, except on startup.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
	gem at rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588

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    "If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it." - Lord Kelvin
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