Re: Patch: new random pseudodevice

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 02:41:25PM -0500, Paul Koning wrote:
> ... That's essentially what old time Ethernet chips like Lance did

IIRC The lance's CSMACD backoff was deterministic, if you were
really unlucky two systems could collide packets for ever!
(On a network with only 2 hosts.)

On a separate note, I've sometimes wondered how well RC4 would work as
an entropy pool. Just cycle it in key-gen mode for any byte that might
have any randomness in it.
When you want data, cycle it a few times, take some bytes hash them
(to remove any RC4-ness), and cycle it a few more times.
Probably the same idea as Fortuna is using.
Adding a small amount of randomness should impove things significantly
- and you don't actual care if it is random.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost