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Auerbach Publications
© 2001 CRC Press LLC
08/01
creased 100 times. The greater access speeds attained by moving away
from the public phone system and modems to dedicated broadband con-
nectivity were quickly followed by rash of excitement; however, at the
same time, many wanted the service to access corporate resources. As
the excitement wore off from the huge leap in access speeds, many
turned their eyes on ways to use this for remote access. It is at this point
that VPN technology took off and absorbed the technical community.
Remote client software was the first on the scene. A product package
included a device that was connected to the Internet at the corporate site
and the client software that was loaded on the roaming system, resulting
in remote access to corporate resources over the Internet. A great deal of
time and money was invested in remote access solutions, and that con-
tinues today. In concert with remote client-based access, the rush to
VPNs was joined by DSL and cable modem replacements that provided
the VPN termination, once again relieving the client system from the re-
sponsibility of the communication. VPNs are now a wildfire being
pushed across the technical landscape by a gale-force wind of broad-
band access.
Once unbridled access to the corporate network was available, it was
not uncommon for remote sites or users to copy or open data normally
maintained under the protection of elaborate firewalls and other protec-
tion suites provided at the corporate site. For many implementations,
VPNs are used to run applications that would normally not be available
on remote systems or require expensive resources and support to provide
to employees at remote offices. In short, VPNs are being used for nearly
everything that is typically available to a system residing on the internal
network. This is to be expected, considering that vendors are selling the
technology to do just that operate as if on the internal network. Some
solutions even incorporate Microsofts Windows Internet Naming Service
(WINS) and NetBIOS capabilities into their products to allow Domain
browsing for systems and resources as if at the corporate site.
In essence, VPNs are being implemented as the panacea to integrate
remote activities into internal operations as seamlessly as possible. The
end product is data and applications being run from systems well outside
the confines of a controlled environment.
OPEN ENDED
Fundamentally, the service afforded by a VPN is quite simple: protect the
information in transit, period. In doing so, various communications perks
can be realized. A good example is tunneling. To accommodate protect-
ed communications as seamlessly as possible, the original data stream is
encapsulated and then transmitted. The encapsulation procedure simpli-
fies the protection process and transmittal of the datagram. The advan-
tage that arises is that the systems in the VPN communicate as if there