3.1 General

Finland is technically a highly advanced country, and arguably boasts the most advanced public telecommunication systems in the world. It is also a leading country in software research and development. An additional advantage is lack of restrictions on development and use of cryptographic algorithms which restricts progress in other countries.

In 1995, Tech. Lic. Pekka Nikander initiated a project on network security at the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory (TCM) at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT). At the time there were no implementations of IPSEC outside the United States. Part of the project was to develop and study IPSEC prototypes which could later be implemented as functional software.

The initial works was done by Timo Aalto as part of his Master's Thesis. It involved a prototype of IPSEC under Solaris 2.5 OS using STREAMS mechanism. The project was continued by Santeri Paavolainen who set out to optimize and improve the code. In 1997 Bengt Sahlin tried a different approach, and developed a Conduits+/Java prototype. Also during 1996/97 a group of students designed a Macintosh version as part of the Tik-76.115 Individual Project course.