A group of four companies have developed the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, which is designed to enable users to set up virtual private networks across the Internet. The group – Microsoft Corp, 3Com Corp, Ascend Communications Inc and ECI Telema tics International Inc – says that the specification is needed to enable secure access to corporate networks across the Internet. As its name suggests, the protocol is based on the Point-to-Point Protocol, and is thus claimed to be compatible with existing Point-to-Point Protocol-enabled systems and not to require changes to Point-to-Point client software – although Internet service providers would be required to introduce a minimal software upgrade. As one of the development partners, Microsoft plans to pilot and evaluate the protocol on the Microsoft Network, through UUNet Technologies Inc, which is the official Internet access provider for the Microsoft Network. Microsoft is also planning to implement it on version 4 of Windows NT Server, while the other three partners have committed themselves to introducing it on their remote access server products. The Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol will be submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force for consideration as a standard and Microsoft is also making it available over the Internet from file transfer protocol at //ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/pptp.
