At initial stage of using the internet, companies tries to promote their products and services with the help of corporate websites. In today’s world with unlimited potential of internet, companies has shifted their focus on to e-business, using the global reach of the Internet for easy access to key business applications and data that reside in traditional IT systems. At this level of business globalization companies are looking for the best solution to securely and cost-effectively extend to reach of their applications and data access across the world. Virtual Private Network (VPN) offers more comprehensive and highly secure solutions to convey information across the world using World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet.
According to a Research Report by Infonetics Research Inc. in 1997 use of virtual private network estimates savings from 20% to 47% of wide area network (WAN) costs by replacing leased lines to remote sites with VPNs. And, for remote access VPNs, savings can be 60% to 80% of corporate remote access dial-up costs.
A well designed VPN can greatly benefit a company to convey information across internet connecting remote users, branch offices and business partners into an extended corporate network.
Benefits of VPN :
- VPN’s is useful to extend geographic connectivity of network.
- VPN’s is useful to improve the network as well as organizational information security.
- VPN’s is useful reduce operational cost as compared to traditional WAN.
- VPN’s is useful improve the overall productivity of the organization.
- VPN’s is useful simplify the network topology and provide telecommuter support.
Advantages of Remote access VPN :
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- In VPNs Third parties oversee the dial up to the network.
- New users can be added with hardly any additional costs and with no extra expense to the infrastructure.
- WAN circuit and modem costs used under network are eliminated.
- Remote access VPNs call to local ISP numbers. VPNs can be established from anywhere via the internet. For example, you can have VPNs for Afghanistan, for Canada, for Hongkong and any part of the world.
- Cable modems enable fast connectivity and are relatively cost efficient.
- Information is easily and speedily accessible to off-site users in public places via Internet availability and connectivity.
With the explosive benefits of VPN’s recently received a lot of attention from equipment manufacturers, consultants, network designers, service providers, large enterprises and end users due to their cost advantages over traditional enterprise network.
Although virtual private networks becoming the standardized networking technology and this technology is highly featured in upcoming networking products, but not all the products in the market supports all VPN methods. While some VPN methods can be used in conjunction with each other, some are alternative solutions to each other.
Although the technology to implement these virtual private networks is just becoming standardized, not all the products in the market support all VPN methods. While some VPN methods can be used in conjunction with each other, some are alternative solutions to each other. VPN analytics needs to understand the user requirements and taking the following issues into consideration before providing a proper VPN solution;
- Customer Business need
- Information Security
- System Performance
- Interoperability of the solution with customer existing systems
The key to maximizing the value of a VPN is the ability for companies to evolve their VPNs as their business needs change and to easily upgrade to future technology.
Real time application of VPNs:
There have several real time applications of the virtual private networks, some of them are as follows:
Enable users to access a Business Network while travelling: VPNs are frequently used by mobile employers those are operate business with travels. To access their business network, including all its local network resources, while on travels. The local resources don’t have to be exposed directly to the internet, which enhance security level.
Enable users to access Home Network while travelling: A single user can also set up their own VPN to access their own network while travelling. VPN will allow user to access a window Remote Desktop over the Internet, use local file shares, and play over the Internet as if user were on the same Local Area Network (LAN).
Secure users browsing activity from local network and ISP: If users using a public Wi-Fi connection, their browsing activity or cookies on non-HTTPS websites are visible to everyone nearby, if they know how to look. If user wants to hide their browsing activity for a bit more privacy, user can connect to a VPN. The local network will only see a single, secure VPN connection. All the other traffic will travel over the VPN connection. While this can be used to bypass connection-monitoring by users Internet service provider, bear in mind that VPN providers may opt to log the traffic on their ends.
Enable users to be access the Geo-Blocked websites: VPN are frequently used to accessing the Geo-blocked (Region based blocked) websites. For example, if a user form America trying to access their Netflix account while traveling out of the country region, by using VPN user will be able to access these region based websites.
Bypass Internet Censorship: Many Chinese people use VPNs to get around the Great Firewall of China and gain access to the entire Internet. (However, the Great Firewall has apparently started interfering with VPNs recently.)
Prepare system to secure file downloading: Yes, let’s be honest – many people use VPN connections to download files via BitTorrent. This can actually be useful even if users downloading completely legal torrents – if user ISP is throttling BitTorrent and making it extremely slow, users can use BitTorrent on a VPN to get faster speeds. The same is true for other types of traffic user ISP might interfere with (unless they interfere with VPN traffic itself.)
