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> SSL virtually requires buying certificates so > small/hobby sites won't use it startssl.com offers free SSL certificates valid in almost every browser, goo
by jmillikin 14y ago
> SSL virtually requires buying certificates so
> small/hobby sites won't use it
startssl.com offers free SSL certificates valid in almost every browser, good for one year. I've been using them for my own site with no problems. Certificate cost is no excuse for continuing to use unsecured HTTP.
> it involves multiple round-trips and latency is never
> going to go away
Assuming reasonable protocol design (somewhat problematic for HTTP/1.0, better in /1.1 and SPDY), additional round trips are only a factor for the initial connection setup. Later requests can re-use the existing SSL session.
> part of what makes encryption work is that it's
> computationally hard on today's hardware
Encryption is based on being computationally expensive for a third party. The computational load on the communicating parties is negligible, particularly with modern CPUs. From http://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html http://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.ht... , Google experiences CPU overheads of less than one percent:
> On our production frontend machines, SSL/TLS accounts
> for less than 1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of
> memory per connection and less than 2% of network overhead.
- lisper 14y ago> startssl.com offers free SSL certificates valid in almost every browser, good for one year True, but the last time I tried them the UX was a nightmare.
- vacri 14y agoI've just started using them and yes, the UX still isn't great. On the other hand, they are two orders of magnitude cheaper than Symantec (nee Verisign)...
- _seininn 14y ago> startssl.com offers free SSL certificates valid in almost every browser, good for one year startssl certs aren't trusted by my browser (or maybe the os?), so ssl's identity authentication for startssl is void. It's still better than no cert since ISPs can't detect what certs my browser trusts, thus wont make stupid moves, probably. If you can use more widely recognized certificates, please do.
- jlgaddis 14y agoI've debated purchasing a wildcard certificate from them but was afraid of having users whose browsers didn't trust the root CA. May I ask what combination of OS and browser you're using?
- lambada 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_SSL_certificates_for_web_servers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_SSL_certificates_... Claims StartSSLs Free certs are valid in IE>7, Firefox>3, Safari and Android>2.1. I can personally verify they're valid in Google Chrome. Which browser/OS combo are you using?