Most recent edit on 2005-12-08 00:57:04 by Admin
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A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a private communications network usually used within a company, or by several different companies or organisations, communicating over a public network. VPN message traffic is carried on public networking infrastructure (ie, the Internet) using standard (possibly insecure) protocols.
VPNs use cryptographic tunneling protocols to provide the necessary confidentiality (preventing snooping), sender authentication (preventing identity spoofing), and message integrity (preventing message alteration) to achieve the privacy intended. When properly chosen, implemented, and used, such techniques can indeed provide secure communications over insecure networks.
Note that such choice, implementation, and use are not trivial and there are many insecure VPN schemes on the market. Users are cautioned to investigate products they propose to use very carefully. 'VPN' is a label which, by itself, provides little except a marketing tag.
VPN technologies may also be used to enhance security as a 'security overlay' within dedicated networking infrastructuress.
VPN protocols include:
IPSec (IP security), an obligatory part of
IPv6.
PPTP (point-to-point tunneling protocol), developed by Microsoft.
L2F (Layer 2 Forwarding), developed by Cisco.
L2TP (Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol), including work by both Microsoft and Cisco.
Multi-protocol label switching can be used to build VPNs.
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Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2004-05-04 12:10:18 by Roland Stens []
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Virtual Private Network
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a private communications network usually used within a company, or by several different companies or organisations, communicating over a public network. VPN message traffic is carried on public networking infrastructure (ie, the
Internet) using standard (possibly insecure) protocols.
VPNs use cryptographic tunneling protocols to provide the necessary confidentiality (preventing snooping), sender authentication (preventing identity spoofing), and message integrity (preventing message alteration) to achieve the privacy intended. When properly chosen, implemented, and used, such techniques can indeed provide secure communications over insecure networks.
Note that such choice, implementation, and use are not trivial and there are many insecure VPN schemes on the market. Users are cautioned to investigate products they propose to use very carefully. 'VPN' is a label which, by itself, provides little except a marketing tag.
VPN technologies may also be used to enhance security as a 'security overlay' within dedicated networking infrastructuress.
VPN protocols include:
IPSec (IP security), an obligatory part of
IPv6.
PPTP (point-to-point tunneling protocol), developed by Microsoft.
L2F (Layer 2 Forwarding), developed by Cisco.
L2TP (Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol), including work by both Microsoft and Cisco.
Multi-protocol label switching can be used to build VPNs.
From
WikiPedia∞.