Selecting the type of key

PuTTY

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8.2.2 Selecting the type of key

Before generating a key pair using PuTTYgen, you need to select which type of key you need. PuTTYgen currently supports these types of key:

  • An RSA key for use with the SSH-1 protocol.
  • An RSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol.
  • A DSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol.
  • An ECDSA (elliptic curve DSA) key for use with the SSH-2 protocol.
  • An Ed25519 key (another elliptic curve algorithm) for use with the SSH-2 protocol.

The SSH-1 protocol only supports RSA keys; if you will be connecting using the SSH-1 protocol, you must select the first key type or your key will be completely useless.

The SSH-2 protocol supports more than one key type. The types supported by PuTTY are RSA, DSA, ECDSA, and Ed25519.

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