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Category: Science and Technology
Date Submitted: 02/08/2011 09:02 PM
What is a VPN?
Paul Ferguson ferguson@cisco.com Geoff Huston gih@telstra.net
April 1998 Revision 1
Abstract – The term “VPN,” or Virtual Private Network, has become almost as recklessly used in the networking industry as has "QoS" (Quality of Service) to describe a broad set of problems and "solutions," when the objectives themselves have not been properly articulated. This confusion has resulted in a situation where the popular trade press, industry pundits, and vendors and consumers of networking technologies alike, generally use the term “VPN” as an offhand reference for a set of different technologies. This paper attempts to provide a common sense definition of a VPN, and an overview of different approaches to building them.
Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. A Common Sense Definition of Virtual Private Networks VPN Motivations Types of VPN’s Non-IP VPN’s Quality of Service Considerations Conclusions Acknowledgments References
"The wonderful thing about virtual private networks is that its myriad definitions give every company a fair chance to claim that its existing product is actually a VPN. But no matter what definition you choose, the networking buzz-phrase doesn't make sense. The idea is to create a private network via tunneling and/or encryption over the public Internet. Sure, it's a lot cheaper than using your own frame relay connections, but it works about as well as sticking cotton in your ears in Times Square and pretending nobody else is around." [1]
1.
A Common Sense Definition of Virtual Private Networks
As Wired Magazine notes in the quotation above, the myriad definitions of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) are less than helpful in this environment. Accordingly, it makes sense to begin this examination of VPN's to see if it is possible to provide a common sense definition of a VPN. Perhaps the simplest method of attempting to arrive at a simple definition for VPN’s is to look at each word in the acronym individually, and...