VPNs are the hot thing in business connectivity these days. The reason? Getting private business information safely past the corporate firewalls. Within an organization, you have control of your network. If you want to keep the bad guys out, simply cut any data wires that go outside the building. That'll keep 'em at bay. Problem is that you NEED to communicate outside corporate walls in order to do business.
The next step up from no connectivity is a completely private network. You lease dedicated lines running from your offices to anywhere else you want to exchange data. That could be a customer site, a vendor site or an employee working from home. Since you control the wires, you control the access. If you need the ultimate in security and can afford it, this is the way to go. You can go further and encrypt those private lines to make doubly sure nobody can eavesdrop.
A "virtual" private network gives you private communications across public networks. That literally opens up the world to you. By incorporating a combination of dedicated private network lines plus the Internet, you can easily connect to customers located at home or at work, off-site employees, business travelers in hotels or WiFi hotspots, vendors of all sizes, outsourced functions, and any of your stores, warehouses, office sites and so on.
The tricks to making a VPN work are ensuring that you have the right bandwidth to the right locations plus the all important "private" part. Trust the Internet? Yeah, right. Just take a look at what was in your email this morning and you'll get a nice warm fuzzy about how trustworthy unprotected Internet access is. Fortunately, there are ways of making a public infrastructure like the Internet secure and private for your needs.
The privacy trick is called encapsulation. Instead of just sending out packets of data that anyone can intercept, you put your data inside other secure packets that have been encrypted. Your data is essentially traveling inside the ones and zeroes equivalent of a locked armored truck. When it gets to its destination, the encapsulation is removed and your data is available again. In between, nobody can read it even if they gain access to the data stream.
New Edge Networks has made a fine art of virtual private networking, as this industry award attests. Their "Managed VPN" approach looks at your connectivity needs and then provisions the right mix of DSL, T1, Frame Relay and ATM network services. Instead of encrypting data only for transport across the Internet, the packets are encrypted before they leave the premises using a high security 128 bit 3 DES IPSec encryption method. That's more robust than you might get with other providers. Combine encryption with actively managed bandwidth and service level agreements for guaranteed performance and you've got a robust wide area networking solution. The cost is orders of magnitude lower than trying to wire the world yourself. The privacy is orders of magnitude better than just taking your chances with standard Internet access.
We're justifiably proud to offer New Edge Networks services, including managed networks, IP transit, optical carriers, Frame Relay, ATM, T1 and DS3 voice and data services, through our Shop For T1 bandwidth brokerage service. If what you've read sounds like it would benefit your business, let T1 Rex get you a complimentary service quote. No cost, no obligation, of course.
