This effort is coordinated by Jason Wright , an undergraduate student, with the permission and assistance of the CSC department's system administrator, Matt Tuttle . A key is a string of binary digits, which when used with a given block of text, either encrypts or decrypts that text. Symmetric algorithms are usually classed by the size of their keys, or key length. Needless to say, this is a daunting task a best for a single computer. Now here is where Distributed.
Net comes into play.
Instead of running the client on a single computer, it would be much nicer to allow independent computers to work on small pieces and have a centeralized control structure to make sure no work is repeated. Net has done exactly that. They have created key servers which distribute blocks of keys to people running a special client also developed by Distributed. The client program knows the cipher text and the plain text and connects to the server and gets blocks of keys. UNCG CSC Dpt.