ANX's series of IPSec interoperability tests this spring and summer brought in firewall vendors, such as Check Point, network encryption vendors, such as TimeStep and RedCreek, FTP Software, and a certificate authority (CA) vendor, Entrust Technologies. The purpose of the testing was to flush out pro blems in standard implementations. TimeStep ran development interoperability with Entrust's CA, FTP Software has been working with Check Point to provide secure communication with FireWall-1 without having to use Check Point's Secure Remote client.

On the remote-access front, the developers of Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) and Layer 2 Forwarding (L2F) have joined forces to work on a broader, more robust solution, namely Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP). L2TP combines the best of PPTP and L2F into a robust, versatile protocol that will be supported early on by the larger remote-access vendors, promising widespread deployment when the protocol is fully functional. However, L2TP is still several months away from standardization and adoption.