VPNs Illustrated: Tunnels, VPNs, and IPsec

14. IPsec Futures

14.1 Introduction

At the time of this writing (early 2005), the IPsec Working Group is developing specifications for new versions of AH, ESP, and IKE. Although these specifications are still in the Internet Draft stage, they are nearing completion and will soon become RFCs. We can expect that the final versions of these protocols will be essentially as described in this chapter.

Because the specifications are not yet in final form, and because it will likely take some time for implementations to appear and be deployed, we do not describe them in the same detail as we have the current versions. Rather, we discuss how they differ from today’s versions and what additional problems they solve.

For reference, our discussion ...