Why does it take so long to search local FREEDB??

Why does it take so long to search the local FREEDB database in EAC?
My (mis)understanding is that you calculate the number
from the CD, then look it up in the giant hash table that is
the Windows local FREEDB. Shouldn't have to open more than one file
in each genre directory to find all the matching entries?????

Takes darn near as long to search the database as it does to rip
the cd. And FORGET trying to access a local FREEDB across a 100Mbps
network.
Why does the search have to take forever? I can't seem to get any
response out of the EAC forums...maybe I'm setting something up wrong??

Just for kicks I wrote a quickie Visual Basic program to find
the ID string near the end of a 500KB FREEDB file.
Because of the unfortunate choice of line termination character,
I had to read the file a byte at a time and reassemble the
lines before doing a substring search on each one. I didn't bother
to compile it.
Even with all that, it took under two seconds to find the right
place in the file. Oughta be blazing fast if written in a
real language.

Is there some compelling reson why it should take minutes to search
the local FREEDB? Or better yet, is there a compelling reason software
vendors should speed it up? Then it would be ok, performance wise, to
compress the database and save about 2gigs of disk space.

Thanks, mike
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