I've also had a bit of angst in the past, but eventually found that GoDaddy offers the best price in certs last time I checked.
SSL is basically encrypting web traffic to prevent eavesdropping and data theft. The higher the bit number, the better the encryption, so therefore the better the protection and the higher cost. There are also a variety of types of certs, and if you want to protect a number of different hosts (www, mail, mybox) you either purchase a "Wildcard" cert or domain cert that covers all or "up to" a number of hosts. Otherwise you have to purchase one for each host since they are used to uniquely identify a host. I also did a little research some time ago, and found that there is also FREE certs available, unfortunately I cannot remember the name now, but I'm sure a little Googling will help you find it. The only downside to it is if you don't instruct your visitors to configure their browser to include that cert provider as a valid authority, they'll get an "Invalid Certificate" error. I can also recall that the certs only had a life of 3 or 6 months, so that was pretty inconvenient. Lastly, you could just install Certificate Services (if windows) or use OpenSSL (if using an excellent distro) to generate your own, if your visitors can handle the invalid error, knowing that the connection is indeed secure, and you're not trying to root their box... ;-) Mail is basically handled in a similar fashion and is documented well in most environments. Hope that helps. On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 8:02 AM, Steve Breen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We are looking at setting up SSL Certificates for our web site that we > sue Rbase to collect data from. > > Can any one explain how SSL works and why there is such a disparity in cost > from different providers. > > We are also trying to protect email at the pop 3, smtp, web mail and imap > levels and I can not determine if SSL can do this. > > Researching this has now driven me nuts. > > > > > > > Stephen Breen > CDI Services, Inc. > Road Support Division > > -- John Croson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pcnorb.blogspot.com/ http://pcnorb.homelinux.org/
