What are the main characteristics of AES?

What will be an ideal response?

Due to its short key length, DES is not considered to be secure and needed to be replaced. In 1997, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) called for submissions for an advanced encryption standard (AES). It was expected that the chosen algorithm would be used worldwide and analyzed extensively. Five algorithms were finalists: MARS, Serpent, Twofish, Rijndael, and RC6. Rijndael was chosen in November 2001. Since that time, AES has also been called Rijndael. Two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, developed the cipher, and the AES is essentially a subset of the Rijndael cipher. Although in practice they are used interchangeably, strictly speaking, AES is not Rijndael. The Rijndael cipher supports a larger range of block and key sizes. AES has a fixed block size of 128 bits and a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The Rijndael cipher can be specified with key and block sizes in any multiple of 32 bits, with a minimum of 128 bits and a maximum of 256 bits.