At 02:13 AM 9/29/00 +0200, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
At 09:42 26/09/2000 -0700, Paul Hoffman / VPNC wrote:
At 4:09 AM +0200 9/24/00, Fred Baker wrote:
A VPN is, by my definition, any case where one overlays the global
Internet with another private Internet using tunneling. Tunneling
procedures today include MPLS, IPSEC, IP/IP, GRE/IP, and probably
several others.
Others might have a very different definition of VPN. The "P" in "VPN"
stands for "privacy", which requires encryption. Without a lower layer of
encryption, it is trivial for someone to snoop on your MPLS or IP/IP or
GRE/IP tunnel.
I think you'll find it stands for "private", which means about anything you
want it to mean. If that implies encryption to you, then you want IPSEC
either in the tunnel or as the tunnel. I think you will find, though, that
people compare VPNs to frame relay or ATM networks, or leased lines, but
running over an IP infrastructure. In that case, whats private about them
is the addressing architecture (you can use 10.0.0.0/8 address space within
a VPN) and that sort of thing.