History: UserPageChonhulio

__Block read/write, 1MB block size, 1GB total, 2GHz Athlon, 40 GB WDC WD400EB-00CPF0__
||
__read__|__read__|__write__|__write__
__plain__| |__plain__|
total 26.96| |total 33.89|
sys 3.046| |sys 2.623|
''37.98 MB/s''| |''30.21 MB/s''|

__AES-i586-128__|__AES-i586-256__|__AES-i586-128__|__AES-i586-256__
total 40.96|total 43.40|total 35.15|total 35.65
sys 3.36|sys 3.20|sys 25.21|sys 11.37
''25.00 MB/s''|''23.59 MB/s''|''29.13 MB/s''|''28.72 MB/s''

__Serpent-128__|__Serpent-256__|__Serpent-128__|__Serpent-256__
total 47.81|total 47.69|total 40.79|total 40.93
sys 3.37|sys 3.23|sys 6.35|sys 6.18
''21.41 MB/s''|''21.47 MB/s''|''25.10 MB/s''|''25.01 MB/s''

__Twofish-128__|__Twofish-256__|__Twofish-128__|__Twofish-256__
total 47.70|total 47.82|total 42.81|total 42.90
sys 3.48|sys 3.37|sys 12.62|sys 12.86
''21.46 MB/s''|''21.41 MB/s''|''23.91 MB/s''|''23.86 MB/s''

__Blowfish-128__|__Blowfish-256__|__Blowfish-128__|__Blowfish-256__
total 53.02|total 53.18|total 50.69|total 50.65
sys 3.43|sys 3.38|sys 14.91|sys 14.91
''19.31 MB/s''|''19.26 MB/s''|''20.20 MB/s''|''20.21 MB/s''

__AES-128__|__AES-256__|__AES-128__|__AES-256__
total 50.57|total 59.10|total 46.49|total 52.61
sys 3.28|sys 3.26|sys 13.99|sys 15.46
''20.24 MB/s''|''17.32 MB/s''|''22.02 MB/s''|''19.46 MB/s''

__DES-64__|__3-DES-192__|__DES-64__|__3-DES-192__
total 64.65|total 125.62|total 68.24|total 125.48
sys 3.32|sys 3.53|sys 18.91|sys 34.11
''15.84 MB/s''|''8.15 MB/s''|''15.00 MB/s''|''8.16 MB/s''
||
Conclusions:
- The speed of Twofish, Blowfish and Serpent is not affected by keysize
- DES and Triple-DES are completely outdated
- __DES is not secure__, keys are simply too short
- Assembler-optimized code (AES-i586) really makes a difference

In recent versions of Linux (2.6.8 or newer) AES-i586 has been included.
When compiling for an x86-CPU >=i586 it will be used instead of the default implementation.

Further readings on ciphers:
[http://www.schneier.com/twofish.html|Twofish]
[http://www.schneier.com/blowfish.html|Blowfish]
[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/serpent.html|Serpent]
[http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/aes/|AES]
[http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips46-3/fips46-3.pdf|(Triple-)DES]

The performance of encryption algorithms is greatly affected by hardware details. PowerPCs, SPARCs and even different x86-CPUs will give different results.