A small clarification. The US government raised the export
restriction to 56-bit encryption in September 1998. And 56-bit
(even single round) is MUCH harder to break than 40-bit (according
to security professionals like Bruce Schneier in his bible
'Applied Cryptography').
Nonetheless, the problem of requiring Digest support in all
IPP server-side implementations (ie, printers and spoolers)
is that it makes the original IPP WG goal of a protocol that
can be built on EXISTING off-the-shelf HTTP software hopeless.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald
(outside consultant at Xerox)
High North Inc