I already made this post in the crypto community. Because nobody could answer me, I wanted to ask here: I want to understand Pollards kangaroo attack on discrete logarithms. There are two important cases: The discrete logarithm problem DLP and the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem ECDLP. For each of these cases there is a algorithm, which are pretty similar. On my original post you can find the algorithm for ECDLP.
My source for the DLP algorithm is wikipedia and my source for the ECDLP is page 492 of the book handbook of elliptic and hyperelliptic curve cryptography. Both describe the math behind this algorithm.
My question: What does the parameter N do? In the DLP algorithm one chooses a N and in the ECDLP the tame kangaroo jumps N-times. I tried varying N but could not find any significant differences.