A key exchange protocol using commutative subalge-bras of a full matrix algebra is considered. The security of the protocol depends on the difficulty of solving matrix equations XRY = T, with given matrices R and T. We give a polynomial time algorithm to solve XRY = T for the choice of certain types of subalgebras. We also compare the efficiency of the protocol with the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol on the key computation time and the key size.