VPN - Virtual private Networking


A VPN is a secure, private communication tunnel between `two or more devices across a public network (like the Internet). These VPN devices can be either a computer running VPN software or a special device like a VPN enabled router. It allows your home computer to be connected to your office network or can allow two home computers in different locations to connect to each over the Internet.

Even though a VPN's data travels across a public network like the Internet, it is secure because of very strong encryption. If anyone 'listens' to the VPN communications, they will not understand it because all the data is encrypted. In addition, VPN's monitor their traffic in very sophisticated ways that ensure packets never get altered while traveling across the public network. Encryption and data verification is very CPU intensive.

Clients and Servers
A VPN server is a piece of hardware or software that can acts as a gateway into a whole network or a single computer. It is generally 'always on' and listening for VPN clients to connect to it.


A VPN Client is most often a piece of software but can be hardware too. A client initiates a 'call' to the server and logs on. Then the client computer can server network can communicate. They are on the same 'virtual' network. Many broadband routers can 'pass' one or more VPN sessions from your LAN to the Internet. Each router handles this differently.