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White paper: What is a VPN?

  • From: Avi Freedman
  • Date: Fri Mar 06 10:29:27 1998

I'm forwarding this for Paul, who's on vacation...

FYI for anyone interested in something to give customers or management :)

Blurb follows.

Avi

[snip]

Here is a pointer to the completed white paper that Geoff
Huston (Telstra Internet) and I have just completed:

 Title: What is a VPN?

 Abstract:
 The term "VPN," or Virtual Private Network, has become almost as
 recklessly used in the networking industry as has "QoS" (Quality
 of Service) to describe a broad set of problems and "solutions,"
 when the objectives themselves have not been properly articulated.
 This confusion has resulted in a situation where the popular trade
 press, industry pundits, and vendors and  consumers of networking
 technologies alike, generally use the term "VPN" as an offhand
 reference for a set of different technologies.  This paper attempts
 to provide a  common sense definition of a VPN, and an overview of
 different approaches to building them.


The paper can be found under the subheading "Presentations, Slideware,
and Assorted Cruft" at the URL:

  http://www.employees.org:80/~ferguson/

This paper is currently only available in a PostScript (.ps) and
Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats.

The paper (filenames: vpn.zip & vpn.pdf) is also available via anonymous
ftp at ftp://ftp.employees.org/ferguson/<filename>

It should be noted that this is not a positioning paper, but
rather, an attempt to provide some sanity in the effort to
define what constitutes a virtual private network.

Please direct any comments, concerns, kudos, etc. to either Geoff
or myself directly.

Cheers,

- paul (on vacation)

[snip]


--
Paul Ferguson                                           ||        ||
Consulting Engineering                                  ||        ||
Herndon, Virginia   USA                                ||||      ||||
tel: +1.703.397.5938                               ..:||||||:..:||||||:..
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