RSA keysize will influence how long it takes you to encrypt or sign a message. But how long the RSA signing/encryption step takes is going to be the same no matter what the message length. That's because you are only ever signing a hash of the message or encrypting the symmetric session key used to encrypt the message.
I doubt I could notice the difference on my computer between encrypting at 20GB tarball with a 1024bit key or a 4096bit key. With large amounts of data most of the time is spent on the symmetric encryption (or perhaps on compression or disk io?). The bigger the amount of data you're encrypting the less you're going to notice RSA keysize differences :). On 6/18/07, Andrew Berg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: RIPEMD160 > > Robert Hübener wrote: > > Andrew Berg wrote: > >> Try signing/encrypting files that are tens, hundreds, or > >> thousands of megabytes in size. Sure, your average machine can > >> sign/encrypt messages that don't even fill a cluster without > >> breaking a sweat, but if the sensitive data is large, RSA-4096 > >> isn't a good choice unless a gov't agency wants that data. > > The work for the RSA-part of the algorithm is always the same: It > > only has to process either the hash of the message/file or the key > > for the symmetric cipher. > I don't completely understand. Does this mean that > encryption/signature time is only dependent on the hash, and that RSA > key size doesn't matter in this regard? > > - -- > Windows NT 5.1.2600.2180 | Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 | Enigmail 0.95.1 | GPG > 1.4.7 > Key ID: 0x60A78FCB - available on major keyservers and upon request > Fingerprint: 4A84 CAE2 A0D3 2AEB 71F6 07FD F88E 0340 60A7 8FCB > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iQEVAwUBRnV7YfiOA0Bgp4/LAQOH2gf+POMCNDoSeQeGYuct0RTMPCaV2ByvB0wB > 2uXCpGPqlA71pgd+wQ+UC/yEE0f+8v3j3lv7PBfM4e3q3HJhcsAAZJe6lcCYGX1Z > duF9yRfZdrn2TcCIL6URdMds788HWUyGurazzun+kJzUfEkd3hE0BPWyvzyBKV82 > 7c+ti7v2cPAVhcRx2ZDQ50ttVpbWNuIFzRWevS94ns6YQ/HOk9YW2ZB/wowEtOXk > nxivQqWgCEO0meRjPiw4uhS2TNdP5tnKrr0Yh6kXOf2t27L6PNU2JN8tRIA9DByH > muy6q5ZQcoF0P0uN/tvE2hZfD4tkXu6cvkZW/G60GEuWYSpdL51uAA== > =u+hz > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > _______________________________________________ > Gnupg-users mailing list > Gnupg-users@gnupg.org > http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users > _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users