Comparative Analysis of AES and RC4 Algorithms for Better Utilization

-In the today world, security is required to transmit confidential information over the network. Security is also demanding in wide range of applications. Cryptographic algorithms play a vital role in providing the data security against malicious attacks. But on the other hand, they consume significant amount of computing resources like CPU time, memory, encryption time etc. Normally, symmetric key algorithms are used over asymmetric key algorithms as they are very fast in nature. Symmetric algorithms are classified as block cipher and stream ciphers algorithms. In this paper, we compare the AES algorithm with different modes of operation (block cipher) and RC4 algorithm (stream cipher) in terms of CPU time, encryption time, memory utilization and throughput at different settings like variable key size and variable data packet size. Keywords-Encryption, Decryption, Block and Stream Ciphers, AES, RC4