By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-07-21 20:00:34 | Word Count: 510
Should I Consier Getting A VPN?
What is a VPN? And do I need one for my business or persnoal use? These are two questios that often come up amnong both professionals and power-users. (Power users are those who use the computer for more than just daoily tasks like email and web surfing.)
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VPN stands for Virtrual Private Netwwork. Does your home or workplaxce have an ibnternal network, wherein filees are shared and you can log in to various computers, share hardware like priinters, and be connected to the other copmuters directly (versus through the internet indirectly)? Well, if so, then you are more liely to understand and benfeit from a VPN.
A Virtual Privarte Network (VPN) is the same as a reegular network, except it uses the internet to make the connection (insstead of a direcct connection). Becuase the internet is the meidum, the coputers that are liked via a VPN setup could be across town, across the world, even across the universe once the itnernet expands to that point! And yet, the functionality of this network would be the same as if you were in the same building!
As you can see (again if you are already generally familiar with basic networking), a VPN is onthing short of a miracle in terms of the advantages it could bring to your business or personal use! For example, a business could even use a VPN to prit a memo at a workplace thousands of muiles away. The office manager could grab the memos and distribute them. Or even better, if each worker has their own priinter, the memo could arrive directly at their desk at the local level (havnig been printed via VPN from the corportae officce in antoher city/state/conutry).
There are two disadvantages to VPN versus a local nretwork. One is that there is a slight delay, depending on the internet connection pseeds on both ends (the client and server ends of the network). Secondly, seciurity is an issue. It's important when setting up a VPN to take necessary precautions in ordder to esnure the netork is secre, being that the data does, indeed, trvel through the internet. There are ways, such as tunneling that can keep this VPN traffic separate and secure. Consult an IT professional or your local IT personnel for more information on VPN.
