I didn't know they had anything automated. That's a big plus for them.
Yes, and very smoothly it runs as well. I'm hosting the master server. I
also run sub-servers (one a slave to the master, another on my network at
home which is entirely independent) which are ideal for division of labour
and the ability to perform private projects rather than requesting tasks
from the main project.
The URLs you want are http://www.loria.fr/~zimmerma/records/ecmnet.html for
ECMNET in general and http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/ecm.html for the
automatic client/server approach.
The problem with ECMNet is ECM. Although it's a useful tool, after a
point it becomes useless. NFSNet, was one of the only large-scale SNFS
efforts, and made excellent progress filling in the Cunningham
Tables.
The problem with GIMPS is the LL test. Although it's a useful tool, after a
point it becomes useless. Nonetheless, it is making excellent progress in
filling in tables of Mersenne primes.
You are merely restating a law of nature. After a point, everything becomes
useless. ECM is excellent at finding reasonably large factors of numbers of
a reasonable size --- let's say 40 digit factors of integers of a few
thousand digits or less. NFS is completely useless if we want to factor
integers of only 300 digits. On the other hand, if ECM can nibble away
enough digits by finding small factors, the co-factor can be brought in
range of NFS or similar algorithms such as MPQS. This has happened many
times during the history of the Cunningham project.
Perhaps I should have been more clear. What I think we need is more of
a "clearing house" approach, with a client/server relationship
employing probabalistic and guaranteed methods to factor numbers in
the minimum time.
ECMNET gives you the first (probabalistic) of those. Admittedly, the second
isn't really implemented yet, though we came very close with the RSA-129 and
RSA-130 projects. The number theory code already exists in various forms.
If someone wants to spend a few weeks writing a c/s harness for it
Paul
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