The idea of RC5-64 project is to use distributed computing system to test all possible keys in the hope to solve one of RSA challenges. The distributed computing system consists of the servers that distribute key blocks to clients and then collect results from them, and clients that perform the testing of keys received from the servers. Installation of the client is pretty simple:

• Download the client files;
• Run "dnetc --config". In most cases you will need to specify only your e-mail address, but sometimes it involves more than that - for example, if you have dial-up connection the you will need to read client documentation to find out how to configure your client;
• Windows: run "dnetc --install" to install the client as a service, and then start it as "net start dnetc";
• Unix: If you have a "nohup" command on your system then run "nohup dnetc &" to run the client as a detached process. You can optionally set up automatic start up script in /etc/rc3.d directory, but I usually don't do this - we reboot our Unix systems only couple of times a year at most.
• Check your statistics at distributed.net website. Because the project statistics is updated every night you will need to wait until the next day before you find your information there.

Currently (June 2002) there are more than 320,000 participants (not all of them are active) and all of the computers are testing about 0.1% of the keyspace per day. With this speed all of the posible keys will be tested in approximately 200 days, so you still have time to join in if you're not participating in the project.

I joined the RC5-64 project more than one year ago, and so far I tested 2,000,000+ blocks. Most of my blocks are tested on computers of company where I work - Capital Software Corporation (of course, with company permission). Currently I run the client on 21 computers ranging from laptop with Pentium 133 CPU to desktop with Athlon 1.3GHz CPU. View my current RC5-64 statistics.

And finally, if you're interested why I used the cow head as the icon for RC5 project please read the FAQ.