Re: best way to create entropy?

["Robert M. Enger" <NANOG () enger us>]

On 10/11/2012 5:08 PM, Jonathan Lassoff wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:01 PM, shawn wilson <ag4ve.us () gmail com> wrote:
> > in the past, i've done many different things to create entropy -
> > encode videos, watch youtube, tcpdump -vvv > /dev/null, compiled a
> > kernel. but, what is best? just whatever gets your cpu to peak or are
> > some tasks better than others?
> Personally, I've used and recommend this USB stick: http://www.entropykey.co.uk/
>
> Internally, it uses diodes that are reverse-biased just ever so close
> to the breakdown voltage such that they randomly flip state back and
> forth.
>
> Cheers,
> jof
Intel claims to include a hardware Digital Random Number Generator (DRNG) in its later generation chips.  Is their 
offering inadequate/discredited?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391367,00.asp
http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/embedded/innovation/security/walker-article-security
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-digital-random-number-generator-drng-software-implementation-guide/