reading internet data to generate random numbers.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-11-03, Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVEMEcyber.com.au> wrote:

>>>I think that the timing of certain network events is one of the
>>>Linux kernel's entropy sources.
>> 
>> BSD as well. The key word is "one". While network events don't make a
>> good source of random data, proplery combining such sources can create
>> good random data. 
>
><pedant>
>
> Depends on what you mean by "random". In particular, 
> the randomness of network events does not follow a 
> uniform distribution, but then not many things do.

One presumes there is a way to "uniformize" the events, but I'm
just guessings.

[...]

> I have no idea what distribution data from the Internet would
> have, I would imagine it is *extremely* non-uniform and *very*
> biased towards certain values (lots of "<" and ">" I bet, and
> relatively few "\x03").

I've never heard of anybody using the data as source of
entropy.  All the entropy gathering I've read about used the
timing of network events, not the user-data associated with
those events.

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