Even in light-weight wireless computing applications, processing of network-protocols becomes more and more computation- and energy-hungry, with increasing data rated and the need for security operations. To cope with such requirements and as alternative to heavy-weight computation systems we propose an embedded system that is build for fast network-processing while supporting acceleration of state-of-the-art symmetric (AES) and asymmetric (ECC) cryptographic operations. We demonstrate how to build a dedicated TCP accelerating system based on a profiling analysis. We also discuss optimized implementations of the AES and ECC cryptographic protocols while considering the trade-off between software and hardware. Compared to an initial software-only implementation our final system accelerates the protocol handling by a factor of three, while the cryptographic operations are improved by two orders of magnitude. Our system which was manufactured in 0.25μm CMOS technology needs about 55 mW for a data rate of 40 MBit/sec.