RE: Security Use Requirements

[Michael Krause <krause@cup.hp.com>]

At 04:55 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, Michael Eisler wrote:
>Why use DES, which is slow for software implementations, when AES
>is there, is fast, and has little dispute about its safety?
>
>draft-ietf-ipsec-ciph-aes-cbc-01.txt proposes a means
>for using AES in IPsec.
>
>draft-ietf-tls-ciphersuite-03.txt proposes a means for
>using AES in TLS.
>
>3DES is really, really slow for software to the point of being impractical.
>While one can always mandate it for implementation, in practice I doubt any
>customer using a software 3DES over ips will want to use it.

How fast is AES in hardware?  3DES is link-rate in hardware today and in 
wide use by many products.  While software implementations are interesting 
/ value to some, most high-speed implementations, e.g. 1 / 10 GbE, will 
require hardware acceleration and thus the preference is to focus on 
hardware friendly solutions wherever possible.

Mike