Abstract:
Traditionally an organization that wanted to build a wide-area network needed to procure expensive, dedicated lines to connect their offices together. Only large companies could afford to purchase these lines outright, so most organizations "leased" their lines and paid a monthly charge, sometimes thousands of dollars, for the privilege of using cables that no one else could tap into. A viltual private network (VPN) is the extension of a private network that encompasses links across shared or public networks like the Intemet. A VPN enables you to send data between two computers across a shared or public intemetwork in a manner that emulates the prope1ties of a point-to-point private link. The act of configuring and creating a viltual private network is known as viltual private networking. A VPN can suppmt the same intranet/extranet services as a traditional WAN, but VPNs have also grown in popularity for then· ability to supp011 remote access service. In recent years, many organizations have increased the mobility of their workers by allowing more employees to telecommute. Employees also continue to travel and face an increasing need to stay "plugged in" to the company network.
