
VPN is a network technology that allows to extend private network, such as LAN to public network, such as the Internet. Corporations use VPN for remote employees to be able to securely connect to their private network. VPN may also be used by individuals who want to hide or change the IP-address of their machine by connecting to VPN provider. It allows protection against theft, personal data and allows to enhance the privacy level.
VPN advantages:
- allows to create secure connection to another point. WAN-connection is not cheap and therefore is not useful for individuals who connect as a client to server. The information that is tranmsitted between VPN points is encoded and cannot be stolen during transmission via public networks;
- VPN can be used to hide one’s identity - it allows to hide real IP-address of the computer. It may be useful, for example, for gamers or the owners of business - they may hide their personal data and protect themselves from, for example, competitors.
VPN disadvantages:
- due to the fact that all traffic is encoded, the cost of data transmission increases. Also computers use more resources to decode data. The amount of transmitted data is also increasing, that leads to increase of transmission time - up to 10-15 per cent;
- not all VPNs are totally compatible. VPN devices from one vendor may be not compatible with VPN device from another. That is why system administrators who plan to use VPN technologies have to make sure that two VPN endpoints are compatible with each other. The same, the client - server connection can cause slowliness because of lack of compatibility.
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