VPN-Virtual
private Networks
What is VPN?
A VPN is a secure, private
tunnel between two or more devices across a public network such as the
internet. A VPN device can be anything from a standard PC with VPN software
installed on it to a dedicated hardware device called a VPN router.
Basically, VPN allows computers at different locations to communicate with
each other in a safe and secure environment. This can be two computers at
different offices or thousands of computers on different networks around the
world.
VPN is secure because it uses
strong encryption to protect your data as it travels across the internet.
Even if a hacker or snooper tries to eavesdrop on the communication, they
wouldn't be able to understand anything as all the data is encrypted.
Another security aspect of VPN technology is that VPN devices continuously
monitor their data traffic in sophisticated ways to ensure information is
never altered while traveling across a public network.
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VPN
Software and hardware
VPN server software is still
very rare. Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 have a VPN server
built in but as VPN encryption is very CPU intensive, we do not advise using
your existing Windows server as a VPN gateway unless you can afford to
dedicate it to doing just that.
VPN client software, however, is much more readily available but relatively
expensive. When installed on your PC, VPN software creates a secure VPN
tunnel across the Internet and into another network which has a VPN server.
VPN
Protocols
There are two major protocols
(or languages) that VPN technology employs to communicate. Microsoft uses
PPTP or Point to Point Tunneling Protocol whereas almost everyone else uses
IPSec - Internet Protocol Security. Microsoft have however, recently bowed
to the pressure and updated Windows 2000 professional and XP to support
Ipsec. PPTP protocol has a good encryption technology and also features
authentication for verifying a user ID and password. IPSec is purely an
encryption model and is much safer but does not include authentication
routines. A third standard, L2TP is IPSec with authentication built in.
Microsoft operating systems also support L2TP. |
