Keyserver Question

I noticed an odd thing when looking up some keys on the keyserver. I have Enigmail set to use hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net as the first keyserver in the list (and checked the box to always use the first keyserver). When I searched for an old key of mine (from a long gone email address) it came up with 3 keys. When did the same query using Kleopatra which uses hkp://keys.gnupg.net as its only keyserver, it only found 2. I was under the impression that this keyserver was an alias for the first one so should (IMO) provide the same results.

So my question is, there a “preferred” keyserver to use for both?

Thanks

Hi Mark,
there is no preferred key-server. Note that both addresses are pools, so even if you use the same, they may get end up on different servers that may give different results. :wink:

Regards,
Bernhard

Hi Bernhard,

Thanks for the clarification. That is interesting they come back with different results as the keys in I looked up are literally over a decade old.

Anyway I will keep that in mind that if I don’t find a key on one server to try another.

Hi Mark,

to further analyse this, you would need to use the servers directly (and not the ‘pools’)
and say which pubkeys you are trying to look up. :wink:

I’m not sure if it is worth the effort, as the public key-server are just a way of discovering pubkeys and it is not the only way. We believe that WKD (see wiki.gnupg.org/WKD) can be a great addition which allows for a much improved user experience.

Regards,
Bernhard

That makes sense. It could just be an odd one in the pool. I will take a look at that WKD wiki.

Thanks