One motivation behind SSH is trying to make it a de-facto standard replacement for rlogin and rsh. That would make it very hard to replace. It provides important benefits in authentication and protection against intruders - and as a side effect it provides hard to break encryption for anyone. Plus, it was created and is primarily distributed *outside* the United States, in a country where none of the algorithms are patented. It can thus be openly available for anyone, and is not limited by US export restrictions. It currently includes two algorithms that I know to be patented: RSA and IDEA. IDEA can be eliminated from it without breaking compability if it turns out necessary (and, several sources say that non-commercial use of IDEA is permitted). RSA is not patented anywhere but in the US, and there it may be possible for most people to get away by using RSAREF. There is more information at http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh. The RFC describes the protocol. The current list of distribution sites includes: ftp.funet.fi:/pub/unix/security ftp.unit.no:/pub/unix/security ftp.net.ohio-state.edu:/pub/security/ssh ftp.kiae.su:/unix/crypto ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh More sites are welcome. Tatu Ylonen <ylo@cs.hut.fi>