Evaluating the Performance of Symmetric Encryption Algorithms

Internet and networks applications are growing very fast, so the needs to protect such applications are increased. Encryption algorithms play a main role in information security systems. On the other side, those algorithms consume a significant amount of computing resources such as CPU time, memory, and battery power. This paper provides evaluation of six of the most common encryption algorithms namely: AES (Rijndael), DES, 3DES, RC2, Blowfish, and RC6. A comparison has been conducted for those encryption algorithms at different settings for each algorithm such as different sizes of data blocks, different data types, battery power consumption, different key size and finally encryption/decryption speed. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of each algorithm.