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Quantum Random Bit Generator Service

The work on QRBG Service has been motivated by scientific necessity (primarily of local scientific community) of running various simulations, whose results are often greatly affected by quality (distribution, nondeterminism, entropy, etc.) of used random numbers. Since true random numbers are impossible to generate with a finite state machine (such as today's computers), scientists are forced to either use specialized expensive hardware number generators, or, more frequently, to content themselves with suboptimal solutions (like pseudo-random numbers generators).

The Service has begun as a result of an attempt to fulfill the scientists' needs for quality random numbers, but has now grown to a global (public) high-quality random numbers service.

Design requirements for our service [1] were:

  • true randomness of data served (high per-bit-entropy of served data)
  • high speed of data generation and serving
  • high availability of the service (including easy and transparent access to random data),
  • great robustness of the service, and
  • high security for users that require it.

So far, all these features, except the last one, have been implemented. And the solution developed tops other currently available random number acquisition methods (including existing Internet services) in at least one of the numbered categories.

To ensure high-quality of the supplied random numbers (true randomness) and high speed of serving, we have used fast non-deterministic, stand-alone hardware number generator relying on photonic emission in semiconductors. The used Quantum Random Bit Generator was previously developed at Rudjer Boskovic Institute, in Laboratory for Stochastic Signals and Process Research.

QRBG C++ Client

The C++ interface to QRBG service is provided through QRBG class, as defined in src. The library can be compiled together with your source, or it can be installed as a shared Linux library (libqrbg) and linked dynamically.

Installation

The easiest way to install QRBG as a shared library (on 64-bit Linux architectures) is from packages in dist/. On Debian/Ubuntu:

$ dpkg -i dist/libqrbg_0.4.0-1_amd64.deb

On RHEL/Fedora/CentOS/SUSE/Mandriva/SciLinux use the RPM package, e.g.:

$ yum install dist/libqrbg-0.4.0-2.x86_64.rpm

On other configurations, you can install from source, in which case you should have autotools and libtool. To build and install, type:

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure && make
$ sudo make install

Example Usage

#include "QRBG.h"

int main() {
    QRBG rndService;
    rndService.defineServer("random.irb.hr", 1227);
    rndService.defineUser("username", "password");

    int a = rndService.getInt();
    double b = rndService.getDouble();
}

For more examples, see test.

Build

You can embed the library, or link it with a system-wide shared lib. To illustrate, we'll build example0.cpp:

$ cd test
$ g++ -Wall -O6 example0.cpp ../src/*.cpp -I ../src -o example0.out

or, use make:

$ make linked

To link it with shared library:

$ g++ -Wall -O6 example0.cpp -l qrbgcpp  -o example0.out

or:

$ make shared

Copyright and License

QRBG service C++ library is Copyright (c) 2007 Radomir Stevanovic and Rudjer Boskovic Institute. Licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for full details.

[1]R. Stevanovic, G. Topic, K. Skala, M. Stipcevic and B.M. Rogina, "Quantum Random Bit Generator Service for Monte Carlo and Other Stochastic Simulations," in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4818, I. Lirkov, S. Margenov, J. Wasniewski (Eds.), Springer-Verlag: Berlin Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 508-515. (http://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+science/book/978-3-540-78825-6)