Virtual Private Network

The Internet has allowed much in the way of increased freedom for information collection and exchange. As a public medium of communication, transactions conducted over the Internet are often subject to the scrutiny of unauthorized individuals. In the past, prior to the widespread proliferation of the Internet and in the days when the large centralized, mainframe-based information structures reigned supreme. Because these structures were affordable by only the largest and most financially viable of organizations, sophisticated and highly ôsecureö private networks evolved that permitted the most private of transactions. The ease with which the Internet is utilized has forced the issue of secure communication and secure transaction down to the smaller size enterprise. Unfortunately, to obtain the same level of security brings with it a high cost of investment and continued ownership. The Virtual Private Network (VPN) has changed all of this. VPNs are able to connect remote users and remote LANs into functional networks. The following describes the VPN in terms of what it is, how it functions, the protocols utilized and its future direction.

By definition, a VPN is a private network configured within the

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Two Forwarding (L2F) protocol. The difference between the two was that PPTP tunnels were created by wrapping PPP packets in IP (a Layer 3 protocol), whereas L2F uses Layer Two protocols such as Frame Relay and ATM for establishing the tunnel. Today, the following five (5) VPN protocols are being utilized. Point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP) Layer-2 forwarding (L2F) protocol Layer-2 tunneling protocol (L2TP) Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) Socks5 Of the above four (4) protocols, PPTP, L2F, and L2TP are most often used for those instances where the user needs to access a LAN environment via a dial-up connection. IPSec is used in those situations where there needs to be communication between separate LANs over IP. Each of the above protocols will be discussed separately below. PPTP PPTP was developed together by Ascend and MicroSoft and remains the most widely utilized solution when using Windows NT servers for VPN applications. It provides remote users with an encrypted multi-protocol access to a network via the Internet. IPX and NetBEUI are the associated layer protocols that are encapsulated by the PPTP protocol for transport over the Internet. PPTP is included in MicroSoft Windows 98 and 2000. The main benefit
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Approximate Word count = 2389
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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