On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 07:04:07PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
> This is perhaps a bunch of dumb questions, I am trying to play with 
> the library to get the hang of it.
> 
> The elliptic curve benchmark code, as written, does not seem to test 
> the SEC2 recommended elliptic curves. 

Yes, the benchmark code needs to be updated.

> The ECP class does not seem to have any direct way of loading a SEC2 
> recommended curve by name.  This seems odd to me.   What is the 
> rationale for this?

That's because the a SEC2 curve include more than just a curve. It
includes a base point and its order. The class that corresponds to a SEC2 
curve is ECParameters. From ECParameters you can get to an ECP object by 
calling GetCurve().

> One reason why this might be a logical way of doing things is that 
> there might be some template class that takes either ECP or EC2N as a 
> parameter, and does load a SEC2 recommended curve by name and 
> provides a derived class that inherits directly from ECP, with only 
> knowledge of SEC2 added, but if that is the rationale, it is not 
> immediately apparent to me what this class is

Note sure what you mean here. If my above answer does not answer your 
question, please ask again.

> I am also having trouble grasping how one class connects to another 
> to provide an implementation of an abelian group.  The things that 
> know how to do the operations of an abelian group seem to live inside 
> things that know how to use the properties of an abelian group to do 
> cryptographic operations.  Are there classes are that know about 
> abelian group operations, but not cryptography?

What do you mean? The classes that know about group operations are in 
ecp.h/cpp and ec2n.h/cpp. The class that know about cryptography are in 
eccrypto.h/cpp. I thought the seperation is pretty clear.

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