Certicom's web site has tutorials on the technology. Discussion centered over two main issues. Certicom has a large number of patents optimizing EC cryptography. Not all patents have been issued yet, so Certicom can not disclose all of them. It was suggested that Certicom put together an internet draft that discusses or describes what portions are available for public use.
Some optimizations only apply to hardware implementations.
The current curves proposed in the Oakley draft are not prime fields and have software speedups which do not apply if the fields used are prime fields, as Certicom proposes. Furthermore, there is disagreement amongst mathematicians as to whether whether prime fields are more secure than non-prime fields. Ted Ts'o observed than when comparing the speed of EC's, it is important to consider both software and hardware implementations, as well as comparing the speed with and without the use of patented optimization techniques. Secure Multicast Issues Ron Cannetti from IBM research gave a presentation sketching the scope of the Secure Multicast problem. Different applications may have very different group characteristics, security requirements, performance requirements, etc.