Virtual Private Network

Virtual Private Network

A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network and the resources contained in the network across public networks like the Internet. It enables a host computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it were a private network with all the functionality, security and management policies of the private network. This is done by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated connections, encryption, or a combination of the two.

The VPN connection across the Internet is technically a wide area network (WAN) link between the sites but appears to the user as a private network link—hence the name "virtual private network".

Read more about Virtual Private Network:  Types of VPN, Security Mechanisms, Example Use of A VPN Tunnel, Routing, User-visible PPVPN Services, Trusted Delivery Networks, VPNs in Mobile Environments

Famous quotes containing the words virtual, private and/or network:

    “Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary.... He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.”
    —Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    “Lisa Fremont: Surprise is the most important element of attack. And besides, you’re not up on your private eye literature. When they’re in trouble it’s always their girl Friday who gets them out of it.
    L.B. Jeffries: Well, is she the girl who saves him from the clutches of the seductive show girls and the over passionate daughters of the rich?
    Lisa Fremont: The same.
    L.B. Jeffries: That’s the one, huh? But he never ends up marrying her, does he? That’s strange.”
    —John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)

    “How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
    —Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)