[Cfrg] Comments on draft-mcgrew-fundamental-ecc-00

[Sean Shen <sshen at huawei.com>]

Hi, David,

Thank you for providing such a document. As a ecc fan, I like this document very much, :)

I was not able to finish reading the whole document yet, but get a few comments so far:

#1
section 2.1
When you are discribing "set Zp = { 0, 1, 2, ..., p-1 }", looks like you do not limit p to be a prime. 

Usually Zn is used for arbitary modular group, Zp refer to modular group with prime order.

 

#2
section 2.2
By definition, the operation "*" defined on any group have a property of associative law: (a*b)*c=a*(b*c).

The operation "*" is called "+" when it also has another good property called commutative law, i.e. a+b=b+a.

 

#3
section
This document only cover curves over finite fields with Characteristic>3. Is there a reason for this? I 

imagine becuase Certicom's recent IPR disclosure provide royalty free license for 3 ECP curves? I don't 

know whether IETF will more recommend ECP curse because of this disclosure, but I think this is a good 

reason to only describe ECP curves. If it is the reason, might be good to mention it. 
I took a brief looks at EC groups defined for IKE and TLS:
For IKE and IKEv2:
 RFC2409 and subsequetly IANA defined, 10 EC2N groups (Characteristic=2)
 (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipsec-registry)
 RFC4753, 3 ECP groups (Characteristic>3)
For TLS:
 RFC4492, 14 EC2N groups, 11 ECP groups
This is a very rough look and can not be considered a survey. 

 

I will keep reading and hope to add more comments.

 

Best,

 

Sean