hardware crypto and SSL?

[Michael Sierchio]

Bill Swingle wrote:

> When you say that they help quite a bit, do you mean for http+SSL or
> some other application?

It depends on the traffic profile -- it significantly reduces the
overhead of session establishment, because that's where pubkey
calculations occur.

> What I'm getting at is this: can anyone actually confirm that using
> hardware crypto can increase http+SSL speeds? I've yet to find any
> mention of it on the web.

For a first estimate, look at the claims of the manufacturers ;-)
(nCipher, Hifn, etc.)