RC5 & OGR: How to Join Us!

If you have any problems joining the team (eg. getting your password), please email me!

First, you will need to download a client from distributed.net's client page. Clients are available for PCs (386s or better), Macs, a whole variety of different flavours of UNIX, plus other OSs and architectures. Use the latest build for your platform.

Setting up is easy if you have a permanent Internet connection, although you may have to manually set some of the connection parameters if you are running the client through a particularly tough firewall (this is explained in the help).

distributed.net recommend a low number of blocks for the input and output buffers if the client has a permanent connection. You should increase the size of the buffers if you have a partial Internet connection (eg. via a dial-up modem). You can then let the client flush/download buffers automatically or manually. As a rough guide, a Pentium II 233MHz processed just over 200 RC5/64 blocks/day.

If the client has emptied the input buffer, and it cannot establish a network connection, it will start to produce random blocks. Although this may aid the team's effort, there is a fair chance that someone has already produced the same blocks (the random number generator has probably been run before with the same seed). Therefore you should avoid this if possible, although random blocks are better than no blocks!!! Note: Later versions of the client handle random block generation better.

If you do not have an Internet connection, or you have machines available which do not have an Internet connection, it is still possible to run the client. You will have to run a client on a machine with an Internet connection to grab blocks. Ideally, blocks should be as large as possible, but still be practical. There is also an email gateway that can be used, although you have to manually attach & unattach the buffers to the email messages.

When you are setting the client up, you will have to give it an email id. Enter your own email address. Originally, I allowed people to use my own email address. This makes setting-up easier, but if redbaron@cix finds the winning key, there will be no way to determine which individual found the key! Ie. don't or you could lose $1000 which is rightfully yours! To affiliate your email id to the Team, do the following:

1.) Set the client up, and process some blocks using your email id. Submit them.
2.) Wait for the distributed.net statistics to be updated. Updates occur at midnight, GMT.
3.) Under "Individuals", search for the email id which you submitted the blocks under.
4.) This should give you a one line summary for your email id. If the search was non-unique, it may give you more lines. Click on the 'X' by your email id.
5.) This will give you the summary of your statistics. Click on the button at the bottom, to have your password emailed to you.
6.) Wait for your password to arrive. Go to the Challis team page, and click the "join this team" page. You will need to enter your email address and password.

distributed.net maintain a number of FAQs which may be of interest. Also, the FAQs and some documents detailing the RC5 algorithm can be found in the CIX distr_net_comp conference.

When you join the team, please could you email me, so that I know who's helping. I'd also like to add you to the Members List, so include the necessary information if possible. If you wish to remain anonymous, then just say so (I usually add "nospam" to published email addresses).

There are also some Hints and Tips for making the clients run faster.

Return to the main distributed.net page.