NETGEAR fvs114 manual Aes

Reference Manual for the ProSafe VPN Firewall FVS114

AES

AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard. AES is a symmetric key encryption technique that will replace the commonly used Data Encryption Standard (DES). Not only does AES provide more security than DES and 3DES, it also has better performance, making AES highly attractive for use in constrained environments.

It was the result of a worldwide call for submissions of encryption algorithms issued by the US Government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1997 and completed in 2000.

AES provides strong encryption and has been selected by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard in November 2001 (FIPS-197). The U.S. Government (NSA) announced that AES is secure enough to protect classified information up to the top secret level, which is the highest security level and defined as information which would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed to the public.

The AES algorithm uses one of three cipher key strengths: a 128-, 192-, or 256-bit encryption key (password). Each encryption key size causes the algorithm to behave slightly differently, so the increasing key sizes not only offer a larger number of bits with which you can scramble the data, but also increase the complexity of the cipher algorithm.

ARP

Address Resolution Protocol, a TCP/IP protocol used to convert an IP address into a physical address (called a DLC address), such as an Ethernet address. A host wishing to obtain a physical address broadcasts an ARP request onto the TCP/IP network. The host on the network that has the IP address in the request then replies with its physical hardware address. There is also Reverse ARP (RARP) which can be used by a host to discover its IP address. In this case, the host broadcasts its physical address and a RARP server replies with the host's IP address.

Auto Uplink

Auto UplinkTM technology (also called MDI/MDIX) eliminates the need to worry about crossover vs. straight-through Ethernet cables. Auto UplinkTM will accommodate either type of cable to make the right connection.

B

Bandwidth

The information capacity, measured in bits per second, that a channel could transmit. Bandwidth examples include 10 Mbps for Ethernet, 100 Mbps for Fast Ethernet, and 1000 Mbps (I Gbps) for Gigabit Ethernet.

Baud

The signaling rate of a line, that is, the number of transitions (voltage or frequency changes) made per second. Also known as line speed.

2 Glossary

202-10098-01, April 2005