Vpn

This paper will Describe in detail what Virtual Private Networking is and how it is used in companies. It will cover all of the benefits, as well as the problems encountered in achieving success with this facilitator of social software. It will give examples of companies and how they use the technology, it will provide case studies of companies that have used the technology successfully. It will review the author's thoughts of how to use VPN in a common workplace.

Then it will show you how to implement VPN on a network, through both hardware and software installations. You will see how employees collaborate with this tool and use it to increase productivity. You will see the obstacles that you would encounter with a VPN system and how to overcome those obstacles and solve problems that might occur in its everyday use.

Later in the paper you will see the more popular products available that support VPN and you will also see a price comparison of those products. Near the end of the paper you will see an estimate that adequately shows the cost of full implementation in a business workplace.

A virtual private network (VPN) uses a public network infrastructure to make the connections among geographical dispersed nodes. It can also be described as a logical local area network that connects an organization's geographically dispersed sites in a way that makes them appear to be part of one single network. A VPN differs from a typical wide area network in the following way. Instead of a hardwired pipeline between nodes of a standard wide area network using a dedicated connection, the connections of a VPN are made through a web of cables of a public network such as the Internet. See Figure 1 & 2 for graphical representation.

Figure 1: A typical leased-line wide area network. Figure 2: The same company using a VPN.

There are several ways a companies use a VPN. A VPN can do anything a leased line wide area network can do and more. Companies connect to geographically distant facilities into a cohesive network. By using the international resources of the Internet, a VPN can offer connectivity virtually anywhere in the world. This allows a company to expand globally. Company use VPN for remote access services. It is not only an extremely cost-effective way to service a mobile workforce or telecommuters but it allows workers to connect into the home office through an Internet service provider from anywhere in the world, riding through a public Internet to log on to the office network, rather than running up long-distance charges by dialing up a remote access server thousand of miles way. Some service companies use VPN to run diagnosis of equipment to determine why it is malfunctioning.

A benefit of VPN's is the use of the Internet to access off site locations or employees. These "virtual" connections allow off site locations and employees communication to the LAN. Another benefit would be improved security. VPN's sit behind a firewall, encrypt information transferred via the Internet, Internet Protocol Security Protocol (IPSec) which allows better encryption and authentication and AAA (authentication, authorization and accounting) servers which are used for more secure access in a remote-access VPN environment (Jeff Tyson, HowStuffworks.com).

Benefits also include reduced cost versus WAN or leased lines. Reduced transmit time and simplified topology.

There are many problems to address before implementing a VPN. These can be divided into three categories: Implementation, Configuration and Support.

Implementation

A successful VPN should acquire simplified software that end users are comfortable using. Otherwise expensive training can impose additional costs not addressed in the initial estimated price of the VPN.

Virtual IP addresses are needed to integrate into the corporate network. These addresses can cause some problems for application protocols such as NETMeeting and Xwindows.

Configuration:

Areas of concern when configuring a VPN include Internet access type, bandwidth usage and Internet availability. Bandwidth usage charges are extremely expensive in Europe, Internet connections may become congested or fail and Internet access may not be possible in some situations. The system administrator must prepare for these concerns prior to implementing a VPN.

Support:

VPN's should maintain their existing dial in methods to allow access to the Internet when an ISP goes down or is congested. This will help guarantee availability to the network when the Internet is not functioning with a high degree of reliability (Jeff Tyson, www.Howstuffworks.com).

We contacted Cyberguard.com and asked for a case study of vpn use, they pointed us to the following case study: The first known successful use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to transmit an entire ECT (Eddy Current Test) inspection of Steam Generators during a regularly scheduled Nuclear Plant Outage using the Internet was recently completed using a SnapGear appliance. Large file binary Steam Generator inspection data was transmitted from New Brunswick Power's Point Lepreau Nuclear Power Station in Canada to a specialized data analysis team located in the small town of Snoqualmie, WA USA.

We also contacted The ETH ZÑŒrich, Department of Physics and asked how they use VPN, they use VPN for two things:

* Access from your home computer to the services at ETHZ (like access to subscriptions of electronic journals)

* Access to the world out of the student docking [1] and wireless LAN [2]

If we were to implement VPN in a business, we would use it depending on the business model. Let's say for instance that we were an IT business that outsourced our workers to companies that needed technicians off and on. We would install VPN in our base network with Cisco switches, then have our technicians connect externally through our IP address with issued accounts. They would use a network connection at the client's business to initially send the request for a VPN session. Our Cisco firewalls would direct them to our internal VPN server where they could use common files and folders to collaborate with our other technicians.

To initially set this up we would first lay a hard wired network in a building with a server specifically for the