What is Virtual Private Network : Working & Its Types

In the year 1996, a method called “point to point tunneling protocol” was invented by Gurdeep Singh Pall from Microsoft to implement the VPN (Virtual Private Network) for the secure connection. Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall was a corporate vice president and he was born on 17 April 1966. Some of the top Virtual Private Network softwares are: NordVPN established in 2012, OpenVPN released on 13 May 2001, ProtonVPN founded in 2012, ExpressVPN discovered by Bevand in 2009, TunnelBear VPN in 2012, WindScribe VPN founded in march 2016, Psiphon VPN, VyprVPN, Hide.me VPN released in 2012, Ipvanish VPN in 2012. This article discusses an overview of virtual private networks.

What is a Virtual Private Network?

Definition: The short form of Virtual Private Network is VPN, it is a type of software. We can see the VPN option on our mobile phones, computers, and laptops. The VPN uses tunneling or virtual point to point connection technology, which creates a secure encrypted connection between the computer and other devices within the same VPN. The virtual private network is used for secure communications between the user and the computer.

Types of Virtual Private Network

The types of a virtual private network are shown in the below figure and the types of a virtual private network (VPN) are discussed with the examples briefly below.

Remote Access VPN

The remote access VPN is also known as a client to site VPN. The data between the business user with the VPN client and corporate site with a VPN server is passed through a VPN tunnel and the internet. Let see how it can be done.

There is a business user with a VPN client and Corporate site with a VPN server, both of these connected to the internet. The encrypted connection established between the VPN server and the VPN client, that encrypted connection is known as the VPN tunnel and this VPN tunnel protects the data between the VPN client and VPN server. The remote access VPN also used by home users, or private users or two regions they are bypass regional restrictions on the internet and access blocked websites.

There is a home user with a VPN client, VPN server and internet. The Home user is connected to the VPN server and creates an encrypted connection known as the VPN tunnel and it protects data between home users and the VPN server. In this way, the home user can access restricted websites. VPN tunnel is an encrypted link between the device and on the internet or between two networks connected on the internet. A VPN tunnel is created using some tunneling protocols such as Point to Point Tunneling Protocol, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol, Secure Sockets Layer, Transport Layer Security, Internet Protocol Security, and OpenVPN. Tunneling is one type of protocol, which allows the secure movement of data from one network to another private network.

 Site to Site VPN

The site to site VPN is also called a LAN TO LAN VPN. This network meets two different sites, let us take Site A and Site B. The main goal of this network is to share the data secretly. If you are connecting to a public network don’t except the security, so you want to build a tunnel again and the tunnel itself you want to build secretly.

Once the tunnel is created you have kept it as secret how the tunnel is created. If someone knows how the tunnel had been established, they will do the reverse engineering and break your tunnel to see the inside data. So, you don’t show how you built that tunnel. To make it secure, Site A tells Site B to use this type of combination of protocols to build the tunnel then Site B agrees that what the site A told.

Then Site A and Site B shares the information secretly and build their tunnel. Once the tunnel is created again the Site A and Site B creates the tunnel 2 inside the tunnel1. Now no one sees what combination of components are used in building the inner tunnel, only Site A and Site B knows how the inner tunnel is built. If no one has an idea of how the inner tunnel is built, they can’t do any reverse engineering and they see what data is going inside, so site to site VPN is secret.

How Virtual Private Network Works?

Suppose you are in an office, the office has a Wi-Fi which is a router and you connect a laptop, mobile phone, and printer with your office router. So using the mobile phone, the laptop you can give the instructions to the printer to print the document. The laptop, mobile phone, and printer connected together and this is called the private network. It is a network because various devices can communicate with each other and this is private because only people who are connected with this router in the office can have access to the printer. The private network figure is shown below.

The figure shown below is a network connection using VPN servers. The VPN servers provide user name and password to the users, using that user id and password we can able to connect to VPN servers anywhere from the world to access the internet.

Suppose the VPN server is not there, you can connect directly to the internet. So when you are connecting to the internet you are using some ISP. The standard form of IPS is Internet Service Provider, it knows everything from where you are accessing the internet. Suppose you are in other china, there you tried to access the Facebook website but it is restricted. An ISP block that Facebook site because the Facebook site is banned in China, so you won’t be able to access that site. If you connected to VPN, you can access that Facebook site in China otherwise you won’t be able to access that site.

Virtual Private Network Software

Some of the virtual private network software’s for mobile phones are shown below

• Super VPN
• Turbo VPN
• Snap VPN
• Secure VPN
• Best VPN
• Thunder VPN
• Touch VPN
• Solo VPN
• X- Vpn

VPN Software’s for Windows

Some of the virtual private network software’s for windows are shown below

• Express VPN
• Cyber Ghost VPN
• Nord VPN
• Vypr VPN
• Private VPN

Advantages

The advantages of the Virtual Private Network are

• Reduce cost
• Better performance
• High security
• Remote control
• Change the IP address
• Share files
• Using a VPN, we can also see the restricted websites

Disadvantages

The advantages of the Virtual Private Network are

• Performance issues
• Low speed
• Bypass limitations
• Platform compatibility
• Difficult to setup
• Data logging
• No 100% anonymity

Features

The features of the Virtual Private Network are

• Security
• Scalability
• Services
• Management

Thus, this is all about virtual private networks. In this article, the Virtual Private Network (VPN) types, advantages, disadvantages, features, and applications for mobile phones and windows are discussed. Here is a question for you which is the best VPN in 2019?