Virtual Private Network (VPN) | An Introduction

VPN stands for virtual private network. A virtual private network (VPN) is a technology that creates a safe and encrypted connection over a less secure network, such as the internet. 

The name only suggests that it is a Virtual “private network” i.e. a user can be the part of a local network sitting at a remote location. It makes use of tunneling protocols to establish a secure connection. 

Lets understand VPN by an example: 

Think of a situation where the corporate office of a bank is situated in Washington, USA. This office has a local network consisting of say 100 computers. Suppose other branches of the bank are in Kathmandu and Tokyo. We need to establish a secure connection between the head office and branch office. VPN lets us overcome this issue in an effective manner. 

The situation is described below: 

• All 100 hundred computers of the corporate office at Washington are connected to the VPN server(which is a well configured server containing a public IP address and a switch to connect all computers present in the local network i.e. in the US head office).
• The person sitting in the Kathmandu office connects to The VPN server using a dial up window and VPN server returns an IP address which belongs to the series of IP addresses belonging to the local network of the corporate office.
• Thus a person from Kathmandu branch becomes local to the head office and information can be shared securely over the public internet.
• So this is the intuitive way of extending local networks even across the geographical borders of the country.