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Server status
Device: connected
Server: running
  • uptime: 43d 00h 12m 35s
  • total clients (requests): 89941
    • now being served: 0
    • successfully served: 89825
    • failed to serve: 116
  • total data requested: 87.23 GiB
  • total data served: 87.07 GiB
Available from: http://random.irb.hr:8000/
Cumulative server statistics
  Connections Data
Served 4,085,620 1.43 TiB
Rejected 21,475 51.64 TiB
» Quota limit 4,323 12.87 GiB
» Auth failed 17,152 51.63 TiB
∑ 4,107,095 53.08 TiB
Total users registered: 11,137
Since: Thursday, June 14, 2007 18:08:31.
*Cumulative statistics is updated once per hour.

Press Kit
QRBG logo
» download
QRBG user banner
» download
QRBG Server Poster
» download
QRBG Service paper
Quantum Random Bit Generator Service for Monte Carlo and Other Stochastic Simulations (PDF, 433 KiB)
» download
» how to cite?
QRBG Device paper
Quantum random number generator based on photonic emission in semiconductors (PDF, 110 KiB)
» download
News

[2008-09-22 T 13:12+01] Due to regular server maintenance QRBG service was down for an hour. Now it's back online. Updated. :-)

[2008-03-14 T 19:30+01] Mr. Javier Ruiz from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniéría Informática de la Universidad de la Laguna en Tenerife organized a Pi Day celebration today at his university. Here is a short blog post about it (in Spanish). In short, they played approx. Pi minutes of number Pi, with digits downloaded from our service. :-)
Happy Pi Day everyone! :-)

[2008-01-14 T 20:00+01] The service is up again! Unfortunately, the QRBG device we had died last week.
Until we buy new a generator, the service will be serving you from its 1 TiB disk cache. For that reason, we're starting to (temporarily) enforce per-user download quota of 1 GiB per day.

[2008-01-08 T 12:30+01] The service will be down for some time, due to technical difficulties with the QRBG hardware. We'll try to resolve these problems as soon as possible; until then, we apologize for the inconvenience...

[2007-11-22] The service (including the web) will be down in period: [2007-11-26T14:00+01, 2007-11-26T20:00+01], due to server maintenance.

[2007-10-15] I'm running some Monte Carlo simulations that require over 1 TiB of random data. So, I apologize for any slow-down you may experience. Simulations will take a couple of days. Enjoy the quantum randomness! :-)

[2007-08-22] For the last several days the QRBG service/server was unavailable, due to a disk failure caused by a heavy thunderstorm last week. The service is now back online. We managed to recover all data, including the users database, so you can continue using the service as usual. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

[2007-07-20] "The crowd went wild!" :-)
Yesterday, over 1 million hits. Over 80,000 visits. Over 2800 registered users. Over 5GiB of random data downloaded. Over 20,000 user requests served...
Keep on coming.. :-)

[2007-07-19] I was thrilled to see that the QRBGS project has been SlashDotted. And Dugg (or however you spell it :D). Unfortunately, the original text that these sites refer to has been written by the PR department, misinterpreting some facts in the process, and forgetting to run the final version by me. In spite of that, the article inspired quite a bit of interest. I would like to apologise to all the readers who are now busily generating their pseudo-random number databases by rolling dice. :-)

Introduction
The work on QRBG Service has been motivated by scientific necessity (primarily of local scientific community) of running various simulations (in cluster/Grid environments), 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 were:

  1. true randomness of data served (high per-bit-entropy of served data)
  2. high speed of data generation and serving
  3. high availability of the service (including easy and transparent access to random data,
  4. great robustness of the service, and
  5. 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 (for details, see below).
To achieve high availability of the service, several network access modes are developed, or shall be developed. These include transparent acquisition of random numbers using C/C++ libraries, web services (access over the SOAP protocol), and Mathematica/MATLAB client add-ons.
To enable high security, in future, SSL protocol shall be supported, i.e. all data shall be encrypted, at users request, with user/service certificates.

If you are interested in more details, you can find them in my paper: "Quantum Random Bit Generator Service for Monte Carlo and Other Stochastic Simulations." (download)

Please feel free to register, download the client of your preference (from the Download section) and start using the service!

Randomness Source
We use 'Quantum Random Bit Generator' (QRBG121), which is a fast non-deterministic random bit (number) generator whose randomness relies on intrinsic randomness of the quantum physical process of photonic emission in semiconductors and subsequent detection by photoelectric effect. In this process photons are detected at random, one by one independently of each other. Timing information of detected photons is used to generate random binary digits - bits. The unique feature of this method is that it uses only one photon detector to produce both zeros and ones which results in a very small bias and high immunity to components variation and aging. Furthermore, detection of individual photons is made by a photomultiplier (PMT). Compared to solid state photon detectors the PMT's have drastically superior signal to noise performance and much lower probability of appearing of afterpulses which could be a source of unwanted correlations.
Read more at the product page: http://qrbg.irb.hr/.
Download
Description Platform Type Size Download link
C++ library (and a few QRBG client examples) [v0.31, 2007-07-19]
Note 1: Compiles under Visual Studio and g++.
Note 2: You must edit the code and change logon credentials (username, password) to be able to access the Service.
Windows/Linux/Mac source files 16.19 KiB cppclient.zip
Windows Dynamic Link Library for C and C++ [v0.2, 2008-04-01]
Note 1: Both debug and release versions are included.
Note 2: Usage examples from both C and C++ are included (However, you must edit the code and change logon credentials (username, password) to be able to access the Service.)
Windows dll/lib/h + sample source 413.64 KiB dll.zip
QRBG Toolbox for MathWorks MATLAB [v0.31, 2007-07-19]
Note 1: For installation instructions see readme.txt file in the archive.
Windows/MATLAB dll/m 43.83 KiB toolbox.zip
QRand Command-line Utility [v0.2, 2007-07-17]
Note 1: Compiles under Visual Studio and g++.
Note 2: Windows executable included.
Note 3: GNU Linux executable included.
Note 4: See user-contributed downloads for Mac OS X executables.
Windows/Linux/Mac source + exe 86.41 KiB qrand.zip
User-contributed Downloads
(Re)distributed with the permission of authors, without warranty of any kind.
Description Platform Type Size Download link
Java Access Class
Windows/Linux/Mac source (+ bytecode) 11.28 KiB
17.56 KiB
3.73 KiB 		qrbg-java-1.jar
qrbg-java-2.jar
qrbg-java-3.zip
Python Access Class
Windows/Linux/Mac source file 5.43 KiB qrbg.py
PHP Access Class [2009-03-20]
Windows/Linux/Mac source file 12.54 KiB qrbg.php
MATLAB/Octave Linux Utility ('qrand' implementation)
Note 1: This implementation should fill in the gap until the official QRBG MATLAB Toolbox for Linux is released.
Note 2: Uses the cross-platform QRand Command-line Utility.
Linux source 3.29 KiB linqrand.zip, Author's web
QRand Command-line Utility, compiled for Mac OS X
Note 1: XCode project and compiled cross-platform version of the QRand Utility for Mac OS X.
Mac source + exe (PowerPC & Intel) 1.13 MiB qrand-osx.zip, Author's web
C# library (sample app and DLL included) [v0.1, 2007-08-28]
Note 1: Author used Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework.
Note 2: Both Windows and Linux version are available.
Windows/Linux source + exe 557.15 KiB
576.21 KiB 		qrbg.net.tar.gz
qrbg.net.zip
Erlang client [2007-12-11]
Note 1: Available only from code.google.com server.
Windows/Linux source variable code.google.com
Delphi client [2008-02-22]
Note 1: Check the source files for a copyright note.
Windows source + exe 476.60 KiB qrbg-delphi.rar
Coming soon...
  • Microsoft Windows QRand Utility with GUI.
  • Wolfram Mathematica QRBG add-on (Windows/Linux)
  • Mathworks MATLAB QRBG Toolbox for Linux
  • Web Service Access
    •

    Written and maintained by Radomir Stevanović. Copyright © 2007 Centre for Informatics and Computing, Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia. Partially funded by SEE-GRID 2.