Abstract:

As the popularity of internet applications and networks increases, so the need to protect them is increased. Encryption algorithms consume a significant amount of computing resources such as CPU time, memory, and battery power. This paper provides a performance evaluation for four of the most common encryption algorithms namely; AES, DES, 3DES, RC2 and. Also a comparison has been conducted by running several encryption settings for each algorithm at different sizes of data blocks, different data type (text, documents and images), and different key size to evaluate the algorithm's encryption/decryption speed. Simulation study has been is implemented.