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Given the considerable expense of private leased
lines, many companies are turning to Virtual Private
Networks (VPN's). Private networks between a
main office and a satellite once required an expensive data line in
order to provide direct connectivity between the two offices. A more economical
solution is to provide both offices connectivity to the
Internet and use the Internet as the medium to communicate between the two offices.
The problem in doing this is that there is no privacy on this
channel, and it's difficult to provide access to internal
resources without providing those resources to everyone on the Internet.
VPN's provide the ability for two offices to communicate with each other in
such a way that it looks like they're directly connected over a private leased
line. The session between them, although going over the Internet, is private
(because the link is encrypted), and the link is convenient, because each can
see each others' internal resources without exposing them to the entire
world. But remember. that although the VPN channel is secure, the Internet
connection must be protected with an appropriate firewall to prevent unauthorized access to your internal network.
A number of firewall vendors include the ability to build VPNs in their
offerings, either directly with their base product, or as an add-on. If you have
need to connect several offices together, this might very well be the best way
to do it.
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