aes encryption c#

[strcmp]

What is a cryptographic provider in Visual c#?

I'm mainly asking this because I see AES listed in there, and I want to use it for a school project. However if AES is there, why are
there still open source implementations of AES and commercial ones (chilkatsoftware has their own AES component)?

I realize that different implementations can have different speeds since some might use look up tables rather than generating values.

Since I couldn't find much info about the AES in C#. No tutorials or anything about how to use it. Is it just some skeleton class where you have to put your own AES implementation in there? IF the one included with microsoft is a fully featured implementation, does it generate values or use lookup tables?

Thanks

[torrud]

Have a look here . It should give you all answers of your questions.