SSL Key Size

I have been doing some Apache optimisation recently and I thought that I will note down various tweaks for documentation purposes only. These tweaks will be written down as I find them.

Using larger RSA keys slow things down.

In my benchmark system, I only get around 500-600 connections/second for a 4096-bit RSA key but get a 800-900 connections/second for a 1024-bit RSA key. Seeing that our server certificates are issued only annually, there is no reason to use a 4k RSA key. Although a 768-bit RSA key is breakable today, a 1024-bit one still stands for now and will probably do so for a couple more years.

So, stick to using 1024-bit RSA keys for SSL until it gets broken.