SECURITY EVALUATION AND ENCRYPTION EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF RC4 STREAM CIPHER FOR CONVERGED NETWORK APPLICATIONS

Alaa E Din Riad – Hamdy K. Elminir – Alaa R. Shehata – Taha R. Ibrahim

   The trend toward converged networks where voice, IP, video and wireless are combined over the same network infrastructure offers significant - and highly attractive - benefits. But this union introduces new vulnerabilities and new opportunities to break into the network and so we need converged security. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using RC4 as a stream key generator for converged network applications. The RC4 was statistically tested against wide range of tests for inspecting the validity of the encryption, and it is mathematically measured for encryption efficiency. All the consequent proves that RC4 with suitable key length is highly secure and efficient enough to be used within the converged network.

Keywords: converged network, converged security, encryption efficiency, RC4, security evaluation, and stream cipher

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