What is Virtual Private Network

The world as we know has evolved to become a global village where one cannot live a distant life or in isolation from what is happening around. Instead of remaining focused to regional locations, businesses are now concerned about capitalizing upon the global market with the expansion of work and eradication of geographic boundaries. Thus, the need of a virtual private network has come into play and has now made communication easier and faster than before.

With the need of more and continuous sharing of information quite a lot could be compromised if not transferred via a secure connection and yet the need of faster and accurate connectivity determines whether a business is quick enough in responding to have a global stance. With countries having to start with high end applications and those already progressing VPN connections in spite of geographic boundaries are inevitable and not just in demand but vital for their progress. Be it marketers or technical experts, the importance of quicker business transaction not just need speed these days but also reliability and privacy especially while connecting to a third party so that private information does not become so big an issue in case of information security.

It is something the multi nationals have been giving utmost importance while establishing roots around the world for smooth international business operation that not only give leverage to the employees in offices but also if they wish to work from their homes. They are then able to benefit from economies of scale while small businesses find connectivity through a VPN to be equally vital for continuous growth and competitiveness. It’s a matter of time when the world would be divided not by geographic boundaries but by technological differences and in order to remain abreast with the pace of business operations it is part of the game to keep evolving throughout these stages.

Virtual Private Networks are computer networks that use secure access to the organization through public telecommunication infrastructure. The purpose is to maintain the security of data transmission in and out of the intranet while being cost effective at the same time, this connection is facilitated by a process called ‘tunneling’.

VPN, could therefore, be divided into two, one of them could be two independent physical networks to make them operate as one, while the other could be a client who is connected to an organization network to work as part of that entity. In a nutshell, works over private as well as public networks like the internet does though without the intervention of any outside party.

This particular process uses an encrypted connection to create a secure connection, thereby, linking the user’s computer to the relevant organization or two physically distant offices separated by geographic boundaries. Most of the manufacturers facilitate VPN facilities and VPN setup in the network devices they produce, similarly, these services can be used for small and big businesses alike. In other words, a VPN is like a Wide Area Network to allow sharing of confidential files meant for office use only, video conferencing and meetings etcetera.

The most common forms of encryption are AES and DES/3DES to have high density VPN integration. There are three different forms of connections being supported by VPN, namely, limited access within the intranet itself, LAN networking and remote access client connections.

A VPN is basically an advanced form of intranet which happens to be password a protected site meant for the use of office employees only while this is more like desktop sharing.
Since, the need for long distance lease lines and hefty telephone charges is eliminated; it helps in saving costs for the organization, therefore, network capacity need not be rented as the old procedures have been getting redundant. Even a broadband connection to establish a VPN network would do make a connection working on public network infrastructure such as the internet. Having mentioned that, clients only need a connection with the nearby internet service provider they can find and make use of a local connection.
Eventually support costs can easily be offloaded as organizations can now outsource the services of a third party service provider as a result of which economies of scale can be achieved by simultaneously servicing as many clients as possible.

However, with new and efficient technology come some drawbacks attached as well, in case of improper configuration, security issues may erupt and careful installation is therefore of utmost importance to the organization. Similarly, the performance and consistency of an intranet dependant VPN depends a lot on the ISP and it’s bandwidth while the organization would have limited control over it.

In case, of having acquired services and products from different vendors, compatibility issue may take place in terms of the difference in standards and solutions could lose on the cost effective stance thought of regarding such a network. Thus, when the firm is establishing grounds with a VPN setup, the costs associated would initially seem rational but later grow massively with the growth of the firm. A continuous change in clients could bring about confidentiality issues for the organization in terms of data security and loss and therefore encryption.

A VPN connection would employ both public and private networks to establish an integrated network connection, while it’s extremely user friendly to install it on Windows XP due to the presence of Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). These protocols provide remote access server connection through the internet and help provide security when resources are accessed.
Likewise, it’s easy to create such a connection. Start by clicking on ‘control panel’ which should lead you to ‘network and internet connections’ and finally to ‘network connections’. After going on ‘click new connections’ go on to click ‘next’, having done that, click on ‘connect to network at my workplace’ and ‘next’ again. This should lead you to ‘Virtual Private Network Connection’ after which you should type a name describing your company, you should then type the IP address and host name of the computer being connected and select next again.

Customization can further be made possible where there is an option for ‘anyone’s use’ or for ‘my use only’. This should complete the connecting process then.

Lastly we would like to share our Top VPN Providers.

Rank	Provider	Starting Price
1	Hidemyass	$11.52/month
2	PureVPN	$9.95/month
3	Private Internet Access	$6.45/month
4	VPN4All	$5.95/month
5	StrongVPN	$7/month
6	IPVanish	$10/month
7	ibVPN	$4.96/Month
8	VPNArea	$11.9/month
9	ExpressVPN	$12.95/Month
10	Overplay VPN	$9.95/month

Mark

Mark is a Technology and VPN Expert. He is working as an author and asst. editor at Bestvpnservice.com. He is more into giving his views on current news and exploring new technologies in Internet Security arena. He has been enjoying writing not with the pen but with the keyboard at an average speed of 40 words per minute.