The keyservers store the (public) PGP keys and key certificates. Everyone looking for a public PGP key can search this key on the keyservers and finally retrieve the found keys. The keyservers synchronise each other. If someone add a key to any of the keyserver, this key is distributed to all keyservers. Because all keys and key certificates are stored on these keyservers, it is possible to verify if a certain key is valid. A key is valid, if it is signed by another trusted key.
You can retrieve or deposit keys by a WWW interface or by PGP/GPG itself. If you search a key you can set several parameters how to search. More information about this do you find on the Search-Key site. The key has to be inserted in ASCII-format (like you get it if you export a key from PGP/GPG) to the textarea on the Add-Key site.
This OPKServer was developed during a project work on the Zurich University of Applied Sience. The developers Timon Frei and Marco Vergari are students at this university and will finish their studies of Information-Technologie IT in automn 2005. Special thanks also to Patrick Feisthammel who supported the whole project. Mr. Feisthammel provided until today the current swiss keyserver. He had the idea for this project, because today no keyserver exits which is comfortable and written in a common programming-language.
This project stands under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). OpenPGP Keyserver is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.