MIT PGP Distribution Site Upgraded

[jis@mit.edu (Jeffrey I. Schiller)]

(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups:
sci.crypt, alt.security.pgp)

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New Software being used to distribute PGP via the World Wide Web from
MIT.

Since last night (Saturday) we have been running new Web Server software
at http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html (the MIT PGP Homepage). This
software is specially coded to deal with the complications of running an
export controlled Web distribution site. The primary visible (to you)
feature of this new software is that the bureaucracy necessary to get
into the distribution site has been automated. When our old software
believed your host was not in the U.S. or Canada because it was unable
to "reverse resolve" your host's name you were out of luck. With this
new software you will be given a chance to enter your e-mail address. We
will then verify your e-mail address in real time and send you a special
password which will allow you access to the distribution site, even if
we couldn't let you in previously (this whole process happens
automatically and doesn't wait for me to manually do anything!!!).

IF YOU PREVIOUSLY SENT ME MAIL ASKING THAT I ADD YOUR SITE (particularly
if I haven't responded, which is likely given the large number of
requests I receive a day) YOU SHOULD TRY OUR WEB SITE NOW.

Note: This software is still a little green and may be down from time to
time while I install new versions (or if it crashes hard while I am
sleeping or in meetings). There are known problems mostly dealing with
older browsers which do "interesting" things. If you cannot get past the
PGP access form page, keep trying (after a day or so). I will be
monitoring the debugging logs and fixing things as I notice problems.
AOL users cannot yet get through (I am working on this tonight, but I
don't know if I'll figure out what is going on before I have to call it
a night).

Please do *not* send me e-mail yet reporting problems (the debugging
logs will tell me a lot) unless you believe the problem you are seeing
is particularly "interesting." Once the code is more stable I will send
another message indicating that I think things are stable, *then* you
can complain to me when things don't work because I will be removing the
debugging code after it is stable.

Also Note: We are only using this new software for PGP at the moment
*NOT* PGPfone. However our plan is to convert the PGPfone distribution
site to this new software as well.

Btw. Phil informs me that the next PGPfone beta test, for both the
Macintosh and (finally) Windows '95 should be ready any day. Some of you
have heard this story before... but maybe this time...

When this next release of PGPfone is made available, the new
distribution system will be in effect.

Technical details (for those who care, the rest of you can skip this):

The new distribution system is a stand alone program which you talk to
after "posting" the PGP access form. This program is a complete Web
server in and of itself. It runs in one process, multiplexing up to 50
connections simultaneously (this makes it fast because it doesn't have
to fork processes, something UNIX isn't particularly good about). It is
written in C++ (compiled under G++) and is currently hosted on a SGI
Indy workstations (175Mhz processor with 100 Megabytes of RAM), though
it may move to a different server soon.

And yes, I will be making it publicly available after I have it better
debugged.

                                -Jeff

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