You Need a Black Cloud Software Defined Perimeter

By: John Shepler

Are you a trusting person? Too bad. That’s going to get you hacked. Respect and privacy are admirable things, but they are not guaranteed by today’s Internet. In addition to all the incredible employees, partners, suppliers and customers that you hold in high regard, there is a dark underbelly of professional criminals, hobbyist & mercenary hackers, mischief makers, psychotics, and nation states with agendas all trolling the same network. Some are looking for victims of opportunity. Others have you in mind as a target. Can your firewall and VPN fend them off?

The Virtual Hopefully Private Network Connection
The VPN or Virtual Private Network was designed to make the Internet act more like a private line or MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network. Even if you have a T1, DS3, OC3 or Ethernet private line at the office, you have a big security hole when an employee out on a sales or repair call stops by the coffee shop and connects back using the free Wi-Fi provided by the store.

Free really means free and open. That guy in the corner staring at his laptop is watching your traffic. He either hacked the shop’s WiFi or created his own look-alike “free” WiFi network that you connected to instead of the real one. This is called “man in the middle” and it is what VPN was designed to protect against. The VPN creates an encrypted connection called a “tunnel” from your employee’s computer to your office server. That makes it pretty hard for someone to get in the middle of the conversation unless they have the private key… and they don’t.

VPN Weaknesses
Not all VPNs have a rugged 256 bit military-grade encryption. Some use protocols that are relatively easy to crack with available hacker tools. PPTP (Peer to Peer tunneling Protocol) is over 20 years old and is desirable because it is fast and easy to setup and use. It’s also more vulnerable than protocols with stronger encryption.

Not all VPN vendors are equally capable. Weak ones may have back doors in their servers or other weaknesses that make it easy to hack the VPN server in the cloud and get everybody’s data. You won’t know until you are hacked and can’t figure out how.

An overall weakness of VPN is that it just protects the tunnel into your company. If that is compromised one way or the other, your entire network and everything on it is wide open to explore and perhaps attack. it would be better if only a small part of the company assets were exposed instead of everything all at once.

The Software Defined Perimeter Black Cloud
The idea behind a Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) is that trust is minimized by allowing access to resources user by user on a need to know basis. The research was done by the U.S. Department Information Systems Agency (DISA) and has come to be known as a “Black Cloud.” The black designation means that the network infrastructure is hidden within the cloud. There are no visible DNS or IP addresses.

SDP authenticates each user and only gives them access to the resources you have approved for that particular user so they can do their jobs. The user or IoT device has no idea what else is on the network. They can’t see it. If they can’t see it, they can’t get access. Someone impersonating that user can’t either.

A system of SDP Hosts and Controllers communicate and verify the authorizations. The Controller has the job of connecting the Initiating and Accepting Host data channels through a Gateway, once authentication and authorization has been completed through the control channels.

The SDP is not only between clients and the data center. It is also deployed within the data center to partition the network to isolate high-value applications. Only a limited number of users with have access to the highly protected application or even know it exists.

Encryption and cloaking are key to SDP security. The usual network probing, such as port scanning, won’t work because nothing will show up in the scan. In a way, SDP is creating virtual networks on a user by user, session by session, basis. What goes on behind the curtain is a complete mystery.

The End of Networks As We Know Them?
The TCP/IP network that has served us so well for decades has to go underground to keep its relevance in today’s high threat environment. We can no longer do business without the Internet and there are just too many bad actors on the public Internet. Technology must evolve to provide the illusion of a simple open Internet but with none of the familiar network topology visible.

Has your company network been hacked or are you concerned about the business disruption this might cause? Right now would be a good time to see what advances have been made in network security, especially managed security solutions in the cloud.

Private Lines and Virtual Private Networks

By: John Shepler

Businesses often have need for a private line to communicate between headquarters and branch offices, factories & warehouses, retail franchises or suppliers. What’s important is reliable connections with security and transparency. The ideal private line gives you the same experience as your local area network.

Classic Point to Point Private Lines
Telephone companies have offered private lines since the analog days. Security systems and radio station studio to transmitter links are examples of private lines that were often little more than pairs of wires that ran directly from one location to another via the central office.

Digital communication introduced the T1 point to point private line that serves the same purpose. Bits go in one end and come out the other. T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, DS3 at 45 Mbps and OC3 at 155 Mbps all offer private line service. Latency and packet loss are low. Speeds are fixed at the capacity of the line.

These private lines work well for connecting a central headquarters as a hub to branch offices as spokes. It takes one line per branch with the central switch or router directing traffic. The lines themselves serve as very, very long network wires to interconnect the LANs at the various locations.

Ethernet Private Lines
Since Ethernet is the protocol used on virtually all local networks today, it makes sense to have the private line running the same protocol. The telco solutions already mentioned require a protocol conversion module to convert between Ethernet and the proprietary protocol that runs on the lines themselves.

Carrier Ethernet private lines run the Ethernet protocol on the line itself. Carrier Ethernet is available as Ethernet over Copper for lower speed connections and Ethernet over Fiber for 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps becoming more available.

Ethernet services have more carriers competing for business which tends to reduce prices per Mbps. The cost per Mbps is almost always less for Ethernet and scalability is much easier. You can have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed and order any bandwidth from 10 Mbps up to 1000 Mbps. When you want an increase or decrease in capacity, a simple phone call to the carrier will make that happen quickly with no equipment changes required.

MPLS Networks
Private lines are a great solution if you only need to interconnect a few locations in a small geographical area. As the number of locations and their distance from headquarters increases, the cost goes up quickly. Each line has a charge and it varies with distance.

A popular alternative is the MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching network. This is a privately run network that uses a proprietary protocol called label switching instead of the more common TCP/IP. The fact that access is limited to subscribers only and the uniqueness of the LS protocol provide a level of security even though you are sharing the network with other users.

MPLS operators work to ensure that you have no awareness of other traffic. Bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss are carefully managed to meet the needs of all subscribers with extra margin for bandwidth bursting when needed.

MPLS is also known a MPLS VPN or Virtual Private Network. That’s because it isn’t truly private and fully dedicated to your use like a private line. If you are feel that you need a additional level of security, you do have the option to encrypt your data before it enters the MPLS network.

Why choose MPLS? It’s a big money saver over long distances where private lines get expensive. All you need is a short private line connection to the network at each location and instructions to the operator as to how to route your traffic.

Internet VPN Solutions
The Internet is the least cost wide area networking solution with highest geographic connectivity. Performance can vary widely. It’s also the least secure network you can find. Anyone and everyone can easily get a connection, and they do.

How can you make the Internet act like a private line? You provide your own encryption from point to point. Two popular approaches are IPsec based on software installed on each computer and SSL or Secure Socket Layer that is already built into web browsers.

Choosing a Private Line Solution
Which approach is best? It depends highly on how many locations you have, where they are, what traffic you intend to send, and what level of performance you require.
There are cost/benefit tradeoffs to each of the above solutions. What’s right for you? An expert consultant will be happy to review your private line or VPN network needs and provide one or more solutions that can do what your business needs done.

Different Types of VPN Providers

Your network is private and you work hard to keep it that way. What about when you connect to the outside world? Do you open your castle gate to let in everybody and everything festering on the Internet? Or, do you protect your network over long distances by using a private or virtually private network?

Before there were VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) there were private networks. There still are. Some situations require so much security that the only way to be sure you maintain control and avoid all intrusion is by using private line point to point connections. You might even go one step further and encrypt the data traveling on those private lines on the odd chance that someone has figured out how to tap in.

Private lines make the most sense when you have only two locations to connect. You can order order a “nailed up” T1 line from point to point. By “nailed up” I mean that the connection is hard wired and stays that way as long as you pay the monthly lease. There is no traffic other than yours on this circuit. Whatever you aren’t using to full capacity simply idles while waiting to be used day and night.

Need a lot more bandwidth? You can order DS3 private lines at 45 Mbps or move up to fiber optic service starting at 155 Mbps. An alternative is Carrier Ethernet over copper or fiber. With Ethernet you have many more bandwidth options and the cost is generally lower than with traditional telecom services.

Note that these circuits are dedicated to your locations, but your data may be multiplexed with data from other users while it is on the line. SONET fiber service and Ethernet over Fiber has so much bandwidth that it doesn’t make economic sense to use an entire strand or even a wavelength for 50 or 100 Mbps of traffic.

This is the beginning of virtual private networking. In this case, the provider divvies up the available bandwidth by TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) time slots or virtual private circuits. Since the network is privately operated, you have the protection that the general public has no outside access to any of this traffic and no way to snoop on your data stream or cause trouble.

If you need really massive amounts of bandwidth, you can rent wavelengths on fiber circuits at typically 5 Gbps or rent dark fiber strands themselves that can support nearly unlimited bandwidth. These offer an increased security in that only your traffic is on the wavelength or fiber strand.

Another VPN methodology is the MPLS network. MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching also runs on privately operated networks. It transports IP traffic as well as other protocols but doesn’t use IP labels for routing. Instead MPLS switches install special tags on each packet upon entry to the network and remove them before egress. This is where the virtual private designation comes in. You share the network with other users, but the proprietary MPLS technology protects the privacy of your data while it is on the network. You’ll hear this service referred to as MPLS VPN.

The most common application for VPN is when using the Internet as your connection from point to point or to the general public. If you do business on the Internet, you don’t really have a choice. You may also want to have home workers or traveling employees connect to your business systems without the expense of private lines. The challenge is how to make an inherently risky network like the Internet into something your can trust with sensitive date.

The answer is “tunneling.” This is a concept for creating private channels through a public network. The tunneling is accomplished by encrypting each packet so that it makes no sense to anyone but the intended parties. There are two software methods commonly used to accomplish this.

The legacy method is IPsec or Internet Protocol security. This requires special software to be installed on the company server and client computer. IPsec does the encryption and decryption and must be specially set up to create the virtually private tunnel. One installed, you have a VPN connection from wherever you want to use that particular computer. Other computers must have the same software installed or they won’t work on the VPN.

A competing method is called SLL or Secure Socket Layer. This is the technology you use when accessing your bank account or secure email. It’s become so standard that it is built into all Web browsers and many email programs. With SSL, you need a user account ID and a password to access your remote account. The nice feature is that you an access your account from just about any computer, private or public, and know that your data is securely encrypted.

Are you in need of a business-grade private or virtually private network connection? If so, check out the options and decide which works best for your applications.

MPLS Network Design Supports Global Business

Many companies now have a business presence outside of the United States. This creates a need to connect these facilities back to headquarters and to other regional headquarters or satellite offices. What’s proving to be the best solution for enterprise-grade connectivity is international MPLS networks. Let’s take a look at why.

The low end approach to worldwide communications is the Internet. It already goes everywhere and connects just about everyone. All you need are a broadband connection at each location and you are good to go... or are you?

The problem with the Public Internet is that it serves anyone and everyone with the price of admission, which can even be a free WiFi hotspot. This includes lots of casual users updating their Facebook pages and downloading movies, businesses selling to the general public, and a significant number of bad actors. Malicious attacks on corporate data centers and personal computers continue to grow because it is a lucrative endeavor. This means you don’t dare transmit sensitive data or allow access to your corporate servers without some type of encryption to create a VPN or Virtual Private Network tunneling through the insecure Public Internet.

The other issue is performance. Everybody’s packets are treated exactly alike on the Internet. There’s no such thing as Class of Service (CoS) to put time sensitive packets such as VoIP telephony or video conferencing in a “fast lane.” If you want preferential treatment, you need to move to a private network.

Private point-to-point line services have been the traditional mainstay of private digital business communications. If you only need to connect two locations, then it seems logical to order a dedicated line between those locations. If you need to add more locations, then you are in the Wide Area Network (WAN) business. Typically you create a star network with corporate headquarters at the center and links to each remote location. You then decide the routing to determine how locations communicate to each other.

The private network is highly secure and performs very well because you have total control of all resources. Unfortunately, you have to run the network yourself, solve any connectivity issues that arise, and pay for all those expensive lines.

A more practical approach is to use a privately operated MPLS network to connect from 2 to any number of locations. These can all be within U.S. borders or they can be located in just about any country overseas. All you need is a last-mile connection from each location to the MPLS network. The network operator will manage bandwidth, latency, packet integrity and class of service. That’s right, MPLS networks are designed to support multiple classes of service to support even the most sensitive data streams.

MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This isn’t an IP network, although it can transport IP data. It can also transport just about any other protocol needed. The core of the network is based on label switching routers using a proprietary protocol. That makes it inherently more secure than the Internet or other IP based networks. MPLS service is often touted as a VPN or Virtual Private Network, even though encryption is not required.

What’s available today that may not have been previously is a number of MPLS networks with worldwide reach. They have POPs (Points of Presence) in dozens or more countries and contract with local service providers for the last mile connection. This can be anything from DSL to T1/E1 to SONET fiber or Ethernet. Each location can have the connection that supports its needs. All connect to the core of the MPLS network, which is high speed fiber with massive bandwidth. You have a sense that you are the only one of the network, even though there are many simultaneous users transmitting important data. The fact that the core infrastructure is shared greatly reduces costs compared with an all private line solution.

Do you have a need to connect multiple business locations in a small geographical area, nationwide, or across international borders? If so, get quick pricing quotes for International MPLS Networks and compare cost and quality with your other connectivity options.

Secure Any Public WiFi Hotspot

You know how it is. You’re away from the office and the enterprise grade security on your corporate LAN. Or you’re out and about with your personal computer and away from the security of your encrypted WiFi router. You don’t have a 3G or 4G service for your laptop, but that doesn’t matter. There is WiFi available just about everywhere. The only problem is how much do you have to worry about these unsecured WiFi hotspots.

Worry a lot. Certainly, there isn’t some malicious hacker lurking in the dark corner of every coffee shop and restaurant. But how can you be sure that there isn’t somebody running Firesheep or another spyware program just when you want to send some private email or sensitive corporate data?

You can never be sure. The problem is that cybercrime has turned into big business and the tools needed to lurk on your conversations wirelessly are easy to obtain. You may never get hacked or you might lose sensitive data this afternoon. Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

The threat of someone lurking nearby with a packet sniffer on their otherwise innocent looking laptop has made many of us a bit paranoid. You may not care who’s watching you read the news or check the weather, but do you really want to open your email or log-into personal services in that environment? You can either pay up for 3G and 4G cellular services, which are harder to crack but not impossible, just forget doing much online when you are out and about, or set up Private WiFi for your computers.

What is Private WiFi? It’s a service that creates a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for anything you send over the Internet. If you work from home, your company may have set you up with a corporate VPN so that you can securely access company data. Usually, this involves installing special VPN encryption software on your PC that only works with similar software in the corporate data center.

What’s different about Private WiFi is that it isn’t limited to any particular business or any business at all. This is a VPN that secures your Internet connection, even over public WiFi networks. The way a VPN works is that it encrypts or scrambles the data you transmit and receive while it is on the wireless link. That way it is nearly impossible to decode, and way beyond the capability of the identity thieves sipping a late in the next booth. This is why they call it a virtual private network. It virtually creates a private connection for you across a public network.

The way Private WiFi works is that you install the VPN software on your computer and it creates an encrypted tunnel for your data anytime you use the Internet. That encrypted connection is between your computer and the secure Private WiFi servers. Those servers connect to the Internet using high speed connections. Private WiFi uses industry standard 128-bit encryption, the same technology used by your bank or credit card company. Everything you do on any WiFi or other Internet connection uses this VPN to protect your data.

Private WiFi works with both PCs and Macs and costs about ten buck a month. That’s a lot cheaper than other wireless access if you already have WiFi readily available to you. There are also family plans and corporate discounts available. If you aren’t sure this is for you, why not take a free 3-day trial and see how it works? Go ahead and start your Private WiFi Free 3-day trial now and stop worrying about who’s lurking at your favorite WiFi hotspots.

Advantage of Dedicated Cloud Connections

The capital investment and staff cost savings offered by cloud services are encouraging small, medium and large companies alike to move their telephone and IT resources to the cloud. It’s been assumed that a simple broadband Internet connection will suffice for access. That’s turning out to be a disappointment in some cases.

The notion that bandwidth is bandwidth is how we get in trouble specifying metro and wide area network connections. What makes the Internet attractive as a WAN service is that it is almost universally available and the cost is spread over millions, even billions of users. Savvy companies discovered long ago that you could get around the security issues by encrypting your data to create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. The VPN gives you a private tunnel through a public network.

VPNs work great to support remote workers and traveling employees who’s only way to connect with corporate headquarters is through a wired or wireless Internet service. They’re also good for linking multiple business locations, such as branch offices or franchises. With a VPN you can transfer sensitive financial and inventory files among dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations.

Note that we are talking about file transfers. The TCP/IP network protocol was made for this application. All you do is launch the transfer and TCP will ensure that all the packets that make up the file will get from point A to point B intact. If something goes awry and a packet is corrupted, it is automatically resent.

Remember that the Internet was designed for universal access and to be self-healing in the face of equipment failure or line breaks. While TCP/IP is making sure that files are being accurately transfered, the Internet itself is making sure that there is a path available from point A to point B no matter what. While you can expect to transfer data, voice or video files over the Internet, you can’t really expect that this is going to happen without hiccups or in any minimal amount of time. Packets may or may not be lost and require a resend. The path may change from packet to packet. The latency or time delay from source to destination can vary all over the place, or jitter.

The result of this is that real time performance of Internet connections is highly variable. This is no big deal for data file transfers. The time to transfer may vary by milliseconds or seconds for each file. Time sensitive data streams like audio and video need some extra help in the form of buffering. You compensate for unknowable transmission rate variations by filling up a buffer with packets and then clocking them out at a constant rate.

Buffering works great for one-way downloads, but creates havoc for real-time video or audio streams. That includes telephone calls and video conferencing. You can’t have much of a buffer or the latency increases to the point where you can’t talk and listen at the same time. There is a noticeable delay, fractions of a second or longer, that make two-way communication painful at best. Lost packets from iffy Internet connections add distortion that blurs your video and garbles your audio.

The same Internet that seems fast and responsive when searching for information on Google can be maddening when trying to calm down an angry customer on a VoIP phone call that is breaking up. Automated business processes that worked fine over the LAN when the data center was in-house all of a sudden become sluggish in the cloud. It’s not that the cloud isn’t just as good or better than local resources, it’s that you need a better connection.

What you want is a dedicated connection between you and your cloud provider. Level 3 Communications is now offering dedicated connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) running in Equinix data centers to meet the demand from larger corporations. Dedicated connections include Ethernet Private Line, Ethernet MPLS and Wavelength services. T1 lines are also suitable for smaller companies, although Ethernet over Copper may be a lower cost option and offer more bandwidth for the money.

A dedicated connection ensures that you have steady guaranteed bandwidth plus low latency, jitter and packet loss. Security is also improved because access is limited, not publicly available. A well engineered dedicated connection is just like a very long LAN that includes your locations and your service provider.

Are you disappointed with the performance of your cloud services or concerned that quality will suffer if you move from a local data center to the cloud? All you may need to get things working to your satisfaction is a high quality dedicated cloud connection. Why put up with all that aggravation when dedicated connection prices are lower than they’ve ever been? Check prices and availability of dedicated cloud connection bandwidth you need to support your critical applications.

Transparent LAN Service for WAN Bandwidth

As businesses increasingly move from having all of their activities in a single building or campus, the need for wide area connectivity is increasing. This is especially true of companies with nationwide branch offices, and medical centers spread out over regional areas. There have always been telecommunications services to tie multiple locations together, but now there are services that actually let your local area network span an entire metro area, even multiple states.

The service you may be looking for is called transparent LAN service. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Instead of maintaining individual LANs for each location and then using legacy telecom services to transfer data between them, the transparent LAN makes all those separate LANs look like one big one.

Transparent LAN service is an Ethernet layer 2 switching service. It’s similar to bridging a number of smaller networks together as you would in-house. The difference is that this capability lets you bridge branch offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Seattle and elsewhere so that they are part of a unified whole.

One technology that is rapidly gaining popularity for implementing transparent LANs is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. This is a standards based carrier service that uses IP / MPLS networks for core network. Some carriers have a nationwide footprint for their IP networks, so they can easily offer VPLS in many major cities.

Transparent LAN services run at native LAN speeds of 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps. Higher speeds of 10 Gbps are becoming increasingly available for enterprises with demands for high traffic levels and low latencies. Fully meshed multipoint-to-multipoint layer 2 services require special equipment at both the provider and customer edges. For that reason, a transparent LAN solution is a managed service between all locations. The carrier will install a CE (customer edge) interface and provide the last mile connection between each of your locations and their core network.

With transparent LAN service, a PC on the West Coast is located right next to the printer on the East Coast. You can converge your networks so that you have voice, video and data all running on the same Ethernet network from coast to coast. You don’t have to make all of these WAN connections work, your managed service provider will take care of that. Even a huge network can be managed as if it were right there in your office building.

Does this sound like a service that would benefit your enterprise? If so, get more details and pricing for Transparent LAN Service with a simple online inquiry.

Two Routes to Virtual Private Networking

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs have become the preferred solution for connecting multiple business locations. What’s caused this migration from private ad-hoc point to point connections is cost and ease of maintenance. By partnering with a managed service provider, you can have the benefits of secure multipoint communication without having to staff up or pay exorbitant monthly line lease fees.

Virtual private networking is in the clouds. The question is which type of cloud to choose? You can implement your VPN solution using the public Internet. You can also choose to go totally private for higher performance.

The Internet based VPN is where the term virtually private got started. Everybody knows that there is little private about the Internet. It connects everyone, everywhere with nothing in the way of assured performance or data security. What the Internet has going for it is economy of scale. The monstrous size and diverse connection methods mean that broadband connections are fairly cheap at the consumer level and reasonably priced for dedicated business access with a service level agreement.

What about those security issues? It seems like any data you put on the network is subject to interception by those who could do you harm. It’s not even safe to connect a PC to the Internet without installing virus blocking software first. Some tests have shown that it takes only a matter of minutes to browse the Web with an unprotected computer to have it become infected by compromised sites or malicious messages.

Yet, we use the Internet every day for such sensitive applications as banking and shopping. The key to keeping your data secure is encryption. Establishing encrypted links through the Internet is called “tunneling.” You create a private tunnel through a public thoroughfare. Your network connection isn’t private, but it is virtually private.

Another form of virtual private networking is provided by privately run network clouds, such as Frame Relay or MPLS. These networks strictly limit access to paying customers. They are also managed to establish only those connections that you specify. Because you are sharing the network cloud with other users, your connections are described as virtually private rather than private line. They offer a high level of security, but may also be encrypted to provide an even higher level of guaranteed privacy.

Private networks offer assured performance, especially in the critical areas of latency and jitter that are important for VoIP telephone and real-time video. The Internet is offered with “best effort” performance, but generally lower costs. How do you choose the right solution for your application? Perhaps the best answer is the obvious one. Get price and performance quotes on competing solutions and recommendations from experts before choosing. That’s all made easy with a quick Virtual Private Networking inquiry at AffordableVPN.com. You’ll get a fast reply and the support you need to make the right VPN decision.

Virtual Private Network Definition

You know what a network is, but what is a virtual private network? Is it a real network or something that only exists virtually? Just how private is a virtual private network?

A virtual private network or VPN is a real network. It’s the privacy that is considered virtual. For instance, the Internet is a public network. There is nothing private about it, or intended to be. But there are techniques to add privacy to Internet communications. Those techniques make it virtually private.

Let’s look at what makes a good private network in the first place. One thing you need is complete control over access. Only those people and devices that you explicitly allow on the network should have any access to it. The wired network in your company is private because you’ve strung the wires and know where everything is connected. But if you rent space in a larger office building and use that building’s network, you can’t be sure that your data is completely secure. Someone might be tapped in and listening somewhere in the facility.

Another example of networks that people think are secure but really aren’t are wireless access points or wireless routers. If you use the wireless device as it comes out of the box without enabling security features, you run the risk of eavesdroppers being able to tap into your data.

Control of access through control of the physical network and access lists for wireless access is a good start for privacy. But what about the common carrier networks that link your facilities around the country? Those WAN or wide area networks can be either private or public. If you lease a point to point T1 line, the only connections are at the two ends. Such links become part of your private network.

The next step up is privately owned and operated networks where you are not the only user. MPLS networks fall into that category. They offer a degree of privacy because access to your nodes is controlled per your direction. But there is other traffic on the network cloud from other companies. That’s why MPLS networks are called virtually private by nature.

Now let’s consider the Internet. It’s public through and through. Does that mean you can’t use the Internet for private communications? Of course you can. It’s done every day by companies large and small and millions of individual users. How do they do this? By encrypting the data traveling from point to point over the Internet. When you log into a secure website, you use SSL or Secure Sockets Layer. That’s a protocol that encrypts your data so that only someone with the proper key can read it. Only you and the site you are communicating with have that particular key. Others might intercept your data stream, but it’s all gibberish to them.

When data is encrypted at one end and decrypted at the other, it is said to travel through a tunnel in the Internet. That’s what’s meant by tunneling. Various encryption techniques can be used to create these tunnels and give you a virtual private connection. When someone is said to be using a VPN, they are generally talking about a broadband connection to their employer that is encrypted on their computer by a VPN software application. VPNs allow users located outside of a company’s secure facilities to securely access business data using DSL, Cable broadband, high speed satellite, or wireless Internet access.

What type of private or virtually private network connections are right for your organization? Get expert consultation and the most cost effective WAN network and VPN services now.