Re: The Dining Cryptographers Protocol

[Marc.Ringuette@GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU]

My spin on the Dining Cryptographers Protocol is, it's nifty and
theoretically strong, but in practice mixes are better for almost all uses.

If you have N people in a DC-net, you must exchange N bits of traffic per bit
of anonymous message transmitted.  If you use mixes and send each message on
M hops, you exchange M bits of traffic per bit of anonymous message 
transmitted.  N is typically 100-10000, and M is typically 2-10.  Mixes
are more efficient.

One advantage of DC-nets is that they're instant; with mixes there must be
some delays in order to accumulate enough cover messages to defeat traffic
analysis.



-- Marc Ringuette (mnr@cs.cmu.edu)