Avi

Or point me to somewhere that has an "idiots guide"

To start... I know it stands for Virtual Private Network.. and that's all I know

ChrisB

Basically, you use the Internet as a way of connecting two networks together or a PC to a network (ie a laptop user back to head office).

In the two network scenario, you might have a firewall at each end which encrypts the traffic as it leaves the one network and decrypts when it reaches the other end. This secures your private data as it passes through the 'public' Internet.

If it's a laptop at one end, you would probably installed some client software to do the job of the firewall.

suba

just imagine the internet are connected by roads, motorways, alleyway (for dial-up people???), etc. so you can drive from your home to london on the public roads. but if you need a secure route, then using VPN, the route is the same except that is it secure.

using VPN, you are driving the same roads from your home to london but in a secure way, i suppose you will be driving on your own coz no one will be able to wave to you on your scooby . the route is private and it's yours to use.

hope it make sense. TGIF!

dsmith

Of course that's not the only sort of VPN you can have...

BT are now offering MPLS VPNs aswell. Essenttialy you have a Private WAN running over shared core infrastructure. Benefits of Scale (i.e. thousands of overall connections means lots of POPs which gives cheap access 'cos the distances are small.) No Internet involved (the core is still private). The whole platform is "tag" switched which makes it very very quick.

The produict is IP Clear and its available now from 256K up to half a gig.

We've just started using it and initial impressions are thats is very good.

Deano

SiCotty

As most people have said it means you have your very own private network which only you can use. It just happens to run over a shared infrastructure such as the internet or a large SP such as BT.

An easy way to connect to offices together is to buy two ADSL connections and then connect the two offices together using a VPN which in effect is a secure encrypted tunnel. Same device with a little bit of extra software also allows you to access your site from anywhere on the Internet (for example wirless LAN access from starbuck in london)

Have a look at http://www.cisco.com/go/vpn

Simon

[Edited by SiCotty - 9/20/2002 4:26:55 PM]

P1Fanatic

VPN is the new buzzword and it about the only product most ISP's are focusing on these days.

Jeff Wiltshire

Ok

VPNs come in many different flavours including ones that don't encrypt anything just encapsulate the IP packet into another packet, encrypt the header information only & those that encrypt the header and the payload.

Effectively they all provide a method of traversing a public network via a 'tunnel' which allows the client network (or host) to communicate with the remote network (or host) as if they where directly connected.

Jeff

Chris L

The term does get abused - in its earlier forms, BT used to use VPN to refer to their 'Featurenet' phone systems. As far as I am concenred, the true meaning of the term VPN or IPVPN is the building of encrypted tunnels between two or more sites across a public network (i.e the Internet).

I work for Equant who were the first service provider to introduce an MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) based IPVPN solution. I think we (Equant and other service providers) abuse the term IPVPN by referring to a private customer network built on our own (private) infrastructure. We do offer an Internet based service that also builds a VPN using standard IPSec tunneling methods.

The tag switching element mentioned by Dean refers to class of service. Service providers can now offer prioritisation for different data class and also combine real time applications such as Voice and/or Video over IP. We now have in excess of 500 customers using the service on a global basis - initial reports are very good!

Good sources of information for VPNs would be Cisco , Checkpoint and What is which has loads of info on IT related topics.

Chris

[Edited by Chris L - 9/21/2002 7:04:38 PM]