The full form of VPN- is Virtual Private Network. This is called virtual private network . VPN is a technology that establishes a connection between two communities using the public network Internet, one of which is the server and the other is the host. This technology establishes a tunnel connection in which the data is encrypted. With this technology, the network is private and secure.
You can also use VPN for any company and if you want, you can also use it for your home network. As soon as you use VPN, there are many benefits of using it, let's try to know about them.
A VPN is a series of virtual connections routed over the Internet that encrypts your data as it travels back and forth between your client machine and the Internet resources you are using, such as a web server. Many such Internet protocols have Inherent Encryption such as HTTPS, SSH, NNTPS and LDAPS. So assuming everything involved is working properly, if you use those ports over a VPN connection, your data is encrypted at least twice.
Benefits of VPN
- Secure - VPN Technology gives you advanced protection from Unauthorized Access. For this, VPN uses different types of Encryption and Authentication Protocols. As SSL (Secured Socket Layer) and IPsec come in the VPN category only.
- Less Expensive - Instead of connecting one office to another with Wires, if you take an internet connection and establish a VPN connection on it, then it will cost you 10 times less than Point to Point (Wired) connection.
- Reliable - VPN is a reliable technology. If a router is down in the middle of the connection, then in such a situation your connection will not terminate. In such a situation, a new route is automatically found through VPN.
- Easy & Fast to Establish - It is very easy and fast to install VPN technology as compared to Wired Connection. Where Wired Connection can take you days, the same VPN Technology can be installed in minutes to hours.
- Can be Scaled - You can easily make the VPN network bigger or smaller according to the need.
Use of VPN
A VPN connection is used to provide direct access to a corporate network to a user who is not within the geographic coverage of the network. Logically, the remote user is connected like a regular user who is using the network within the corporate premises.
VPN is used to provide a homogeneous network environment to the corporate firm having its office locations in different parts of the world. Thus, seamless sharing of resources, bypassing geographical barriers.
Other uses include accessing services on the Internet that are not available in a particular country or region, accessing censored content or if a user simply wishes to remain anonymous on the Web.
How does VPN work?
A VPN connection usually works like this. Data is transmitted from your client machine to a point in your VPN network. VPN Point encrypts your data and sends it through the Internet. Another point on your VPN network decrypts your data and sends it to an appropriate Internet resource, such as a web server, email server, or your company's intranet. The Internet resource then sends the data to a point in your VPN network, where it becomes encrypted. That encrypted data is sent via the Internet to another point in your VPN network, which decrypts the data and sends it back to your client machine.
For example, free WiFi networks at airports, so you can assume that all your data is flowing through one big tunnel along with other users' data. So, anyone who wants to spy on you can easily sniff your data packets from the network. When VPN comes into view it provides you with a secret tunnel inside that big tunnel and all your data is turned into garbage values so that no one can detect it.
VPN Protocols
Understanding how a VPN works is not a terrible thing. But, before that, you need to get into the protocols used by VPNs, or generally a set of rules, in providing a secure personal network.
- SSL (Secured Socket Layer) - It uses a 3-way handshake method to ensure proper authentication between client and server machines. The authentication process is based on cryptography where certificates behave as cryptographic keys already stored on the client and server sides, used to initiate the connection.
- IPSec (IP Security) – This protocol can work in transport mode or tunneling mode so that it can serve to protect the VPN connection. The two modes differ in that the transport mode only encapsulates the payload in the data, that is, only the message in the data. Tunneling mode encrypts the entire data to be transmitted.
- PPTP (Point-to-Point Transfer Protocol) - It connects a user located at some remote location with a private server in the VPN network, and also uses tunneling mode for its operation. The low maintenance and simple operation make PPTP a widely adopted VPN protocol. Further credit goes to the inbuilt support provided by Microsoft Windows.
- L2TP (Layer Two Tunneling Protocol) – It facilitates the tunneling of data between two geographic sites on a VPN network. It is often used in conjunction with the IPSec protocol which is helpful for the security layer of the communication.
