Establishing dynamic tunnel access sessions in a communication network

A method and apparatus for implementing dynamic tunnel access sessions at a network device within a communications network. The tunnel access sessions are created between a network device (02), typically a gateway device and a network service (20', 20''), such as the Internet or a corporate intranet. The dynamic tunnel access sessions provide for subscriber-transparent tunneling. The present invention does not require special client-side software to be loaded on the remote host of the subscriber (14'), and does not require any manual configuration of the remote host (14'). A subscriber is capable of establishing more than one tunnel access session to more than one network service (20', 20'') during a network session. Additionally, more than one subscriber who accesses the communication network via the network device is able to establish a communication link with a pre-existing tunnel.