From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 22:56:30 +0800
To: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Subject: Re: ecash speed
In-Reply-To: <199511090508.VAA05884@jobe.shell.portal.com>
Message-ID: <199511091441.JAA15345@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Hal writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:
> 
> >Hal writes:
> >> The point is that if the anonymity afforded by ecash is too costly in
> >> terms of time, then we may end up stuck with a non-anonymous system
> >> simply because that is the only one efficient enough to work.  It would
> >> be good to find out if that is a serious problem.
> 
> >I suspect that as CPU speed exponentiates this will become less and
> >less of a problem. It doesn't especially worry me.
> 
> Consider, though, what happens in the current ecash system if it were
> used to charge a penny per page.
[Describes lots of steps...]

I'm really not that convinced that this is a problem in either
direction. With users everywhere on the net connected via
multi-megabit per second links, high speed CPUs, etc, a few extra TCP
connections and RSA operations really might not be noticed in a half
dozen years.

> This all has to happen whenever you click on a link in your browser.
> Even with fast CPU's I think the extra step of connecting to the bank,
> having it check against all coins, and getting approval will be
> considerable for each link traversal.

Again, I'm not convinced either way. I believe we have to wait and see
how fast things really are in practice.

Perry