Why is blowfish so slow? Other fast algorithms?

First, can someone tell me if the latest version of blowfish (the one
in Applied Crypto 2nd edition) is available online somewhere?  I
looked at a bunch of crypto ftp servers and could only find an older
version of blowfish that did not have the blf_ctx structure allowing
multiple keys to be active at a time.

More importantly, however, on a 120 MHz Pentium, the old blowfish
(compiled with gcc version 2.7.2 optimization -O6) seems to take about
12.6 microseconds for 1 M encryptions and decryptions, which works out
to about 95 cycles per byte.  This is significantly more than the 26
cycles/byte number cited in Applied Crypto 2nd edition.

Can anyone suggest what I might do to speed this up?

Failing that, can anyone suggest other secure, preferably unpatented,
shared-key encryption algorithms that could encrypt at ethernet speeds
(1 MByte/sec) without using most of the CPU on a fast Pentium or
equivalent processor?

Thanks a lot,
David

David Mazieres wrote:

| First, can someone tell me if the latest version of blowfish (the one
| in Applied Crypto 2nd edition) is available online somewhere?  I
| looked at a bunch of crypto ftp servers and could only find an older
| version of blowfish that did not have the blf_ctx structure allowing
| multiple keys to be active at a time.

Did you check ftp.dsi.unimi.it?  I seem to remember them having the
latest source right after Crypto95.  Also, ftp.csua.berkeley.edu
should have it.  (Their code is version 1.3; do you know what version
you're after?)

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume

> From: Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>
> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 11:20:57 -0500 (EST)
> Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8b]
> Content-Type: text
> Content-Length:        662
> 
> David Mazieres wrote:
> 
> | First, can someone tell me if the latest version of blowfish (the one
> | in Applied Crypto 2nd edition) is available online somewhere?  I
> | looked at a bunch of crypto ftp servers and could only find an older
> | version of blowfish that did not have the blf_ctx structure allowing
> | multiple keys to be active at a time.
> 
> Did you check ftp.dsi.unimi.it?  I seem to remember them having the
> latest source right after Crypto95.  Also, ftp.csua.berkeley.edu
> should have it.  (Their code is version 1.3; do you know what version
> you're after?)

Unfortunately, neither of those sites have it.

The version I'm looking for has a blf_ctx structure that gets passed
as the first argument to functions so you can use multiple keys at a
time.  It also has the initialization data stuck in the C code.

Does anyone out there have the Applied Cryptography source code
diskette?  Would you be willing to mail me the code?  It would
probably take a while if I ordered the diskette myself and I'd like to
get the code as soon as possible.

Thanks,
David