Virtual Private Networks

With the advent of globalization, many companies now have wide area networks (WANs) for communicating with their offices and customers around the world. WANs are superior to public networks in terms of reliability, performance, and security, but they are expensive due to the cost of the leased lines used to support them. Now that the Internet reaches around the world, therefore, many companies are reducing costs by using it as a virtual WAN instead of installing a physical WAN. These virtual private networks (VPNs) are private networks that use a public network (usually the Internet) to connect remote sites or users together just as though they were on a leased line (1).

In spite of the cost savings, many businesses were hesitant at first to migrate from leased lines to VPNs. They reasoned that the extra cost was justified to ensure that their data was secure. Allowing their sensitive data to travel over the world's Internet seemed too risky. For this reason, VPN providers have focused on security as the main issue they needed to resolve in order to replace leased lines. A well-designed VPN now has several levels of security:

A firewall is "a piece of software that monitors all incoming network traffic and allows in only the connections that are known and trusted" (3). The firewall gives you access to the ports you need open and closes off those you don't, making your computer e

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