"VPN" redirects here. For other uses, see VPN (disambiguation).
VPNs are frequently used by remote workers or companies with remote offices to share private data and network resources. VPNs may also allow users to bypass regional internet restrictions such as firewalls, and web filtering, by "tunneling" the network connection to a different region.
Technically, the VPN protocol encapsulates network data transfers using a secure cryptographic method between two or more networked devices which are not on the same private network, to keep the data private as it passes through the connecting nodes of a local or wide area network.
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History
Until the end of the 1990s, networked computers were connected through expensive leased lines and/or dial-up phone lines.Virtual Private Networks reduce network costs because they avoid a need for physical leased lines that individually connect remote offices (or remote users) to a private Intranet (internal network). Users can exchange private data securely, making the expensive leased lines unnecessary.[1]
Different VPN systems can include a lot of variation, such as:
- The protocols they use to tunnel the traffic
- The tunnel's termination point, i.e., customer edge or network provider edge
- Whether they offer site-to-site or remote access connectivity
- The levels of security provided
- The OSI layer they present to the connecting network, such as Layer 2 circuits or Layer 3 network connectivity
Security mechanisms
Secure VPNs use cryptographic tunneling protocols to provide confidentiality by blocking intercepts and packet sniffing, allowing sender authentication to block identity spoofing, and provide message integrity by preventing message alteration.Secure VPN protocols include the following:
- IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) was originally developed for IPv6, which requires it. This standards-based security protocol is also widely used with IPv4. Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol frequently runs over IPsec.
- Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) can tunnel an entire network's traffic, as it does in the OpenVPN project, or secure an individual connection. A number of vendors provide remote access VPN capabilities through SSL. An SSL VPN can connect from locations where IPsec runs into trouble with Network Address Translation and firewall rules.
- Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), is used in Cisco's next-generation VPN product, Cisco AnyConnect VPN, to solve the issues SSL/TLS has with tunneling over TCP.
- Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE) works with their Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol and in several compatible implementations on other platforms.
- Microsoft introduced Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1. SSTP tunnels Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) or Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol traffic through an SSL 3.0 channel.
- MPVPN (Multi Path Virtual Private Network). Ragula Systems Development Company owns the registered trademark "MPVPN".[2]
- Secure Shell (SSH) VPN -- OpenSSH offers VPN tunneling to secure remote connections to a network or inter-network links. This should not be confused with port forwarding. OpenSSH server provides limited number of concurrent tunnels and the VPN feature itself does not support personal authentication.[3][4][5]
Authentication
Tunnel endpoints must authenticate before secure VPN tunnels can establish.User-created remote access VPNs may use passwords, biometrics, two-factor authentication or other cryptographic methods.
Network-to-network tunnels often use passwords or digital certificates, as they permanently store the key to allow the tunnel to establish automatically and without intervention from the user.
Routing
Tunneling protocols can be used in a point-to-point topology that would theoretically not be considered a VPN, because a VPN by definition is expected to support arbitrary and changing sets of network nodes. But since most router implementations support a software-defined tunnel interface, customer-provisioned VPNs often are simply defined tunnels running conventional routing protocols.ha
PPVPN Building blocks
Depending on whether the PPVPN runs in layer 2 or layer 3, the building blocks described below may be L2 only, L3 only, or combine them both. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) functionality blurs the L2-L3 identity.RFC 4026 generalized the following terms to cover L2 and L3 VPNs, but they were introduced in RFC 2547.[6]
- Customer edge device. (CE)
- Provider edge device (PE)
- Provider device (P)
User-visible PPVPN services
This section deals with the types of VPN considered in the IETF; some historical names were replaced by these terms.OSI Layer 1 services
Virtual private wire and private line services (VPWS and VPLS)
In both of these services, the service provider does not offer a full routed or bridged network, but provides components to build customer-administered networks. VPWS are point-to-point while VPLS can be point-to-multipoint. They can be Layer 1 emulated circuits with no data link structure.The customer determines the overall customer VPN service, which also can involve routing, bridging, or host network elements.
An unfortunate acronym confusion can occur between Virtual Private Line Service and Virtual Private LAN Service; the context should make it clear whether "VPLS" means the layer 1 virtual private line or the layer 2 virtual private LAN.
OSI Layer 2 services
- Virtual LAN
- Virtual private LAN service (VPLS)
As used in this context, a VPLS is a Layer 2 PPVPN, rather than a private line, emulating the full functionality of a traditional local area network (LAN). From a user standpoint, a VPLS makes it possible to interconnect several LAN segments over a packet-switched, or optical, provider core; a core transparent to the user, making the remote LAN segments behave as one single LAN.[7]
In a VPLS, the provider network emulates a learning bridge, which optionally may include VLAN service.
- Pseudo wire (PW)
- IP-only LAN-like service (IPLS)
[edit] OSI Layer 3 PPVPN architectures
This section discusses the main architectures for PPVPNs, one where the PE disambiguates duplicate addresses in a single routing instance, and the other, virtual router, in which the PE contains a virtual router instance per VPN. The former approach, and its variants, have gained the most attention.One of the challenges of PPVPNs involves different customers using the same address space, especially the IPv4 private address space.[8] The provider must be able to disambiguate overlapping addresses in the multiple customers' PPVPNs.
- BGP/MPLS PPVPN
PEs understand the topology of each VPN, which are interconnected with MPLS tunnels, either directly or via P routers. In MPLS terminology, the P routers are Label Switch Routers without awareness of VPNs.
- Virtual router PPVPN
Virtual router architectures do not need to disambiguate addresses, because rather than a PE router having awareness of all the PPVPNs, the PE contains multiple virtual router instances, which belong to one and only one VPN.
[edit] Plaintext Tunnels
Main article: Tunneling protocol
Some virtual networks may not use encryption to protect the data contents. While VPNs often provide security, an unencrypted overlay network does not neatly fit within the secure or trusted categorization. For example a tunnel set up between two hosts that used Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) would in fact be a virtual private network, but neither secure nor trusted.Besides the GRE example above, native plaintext tunneling protocols include Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) when it is set up without IPsec and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE).
Trusted delivery networks
Trusted VPNs do not use cryptographic tunneling, and instead rely on the security of a single provider's network to protect the traffic.- Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is often used to overlay VPNs, often with quality-of-service control over a trusted delivery network.
- Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)[11] which is a standards-based replacement, and a compromise taking the good features from each, for two proprietary VPN protocols: Cisco's Layer 2 Forwarding (L2F)[12] (obsolete as of 2009[update]) and Microsoft's Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).[13]
VPNs in mobile environments
Main article: Mobile virtual private network
Mobile VPNs are used in a setting where an endpoint of the VPN is not fixed to a single IP address, but instead roams across various networks such as data networks from cellular carriers or between multiple Wi-Fi access points.[14] Mobile VPNs have been widely used in public safety, where they give law enforcement officers access to mission-critical applications, such as computer-assisted dispatch and criminal databases, as they travel between different subnets of a mobile network.[15] They are also used in field service management and by healthcare organizations,[16] among other industries.Increasingly, mobile VPNs are being adopted by mobile professionals and white-collar workers who need reliable connections.[16] They allow users to roam seamlessly across networks and in and out of wireless-coverage areas without losing application sessions or dropping the secure VPN session. A conventional VPN cannot survive such events because the network tunnel is disrupted, causing applications to disconnect, time out,[14] or fail, or even cause the computing device itself to crash.[16]
Instead of logically tying the endpoint of the network tunnel to the physical IP address, each tunnel is bound to a permanently associated IP address at the device. The mobile VPN software handles the necessary network authentication and maintains the network sessions in a manner transparent to the application and the user.[14] The Host Identity Protocol (HIP), under study by the Internet Engineering Task Force, is designed to support mobility of hosts by separating the role of IP addresses for host identification from their locator functionality in an IP network. With HIP a mobile host maintains its logical connections established via the host identity identifier while associating with different IP addresses when roaming between access networks.
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