Virtual Private Network (VPN): A Complete Overview

What is a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?

The VPN or the Virtual private network can be explained as the service that helps in establishing a secure connection between two remote locations using the public internet services. The virtual private network helps in the process of enhancing the security services with the use of the secure medium.  The Use of the VPN is one of the most secured network transmitting protocol that can be used, but it also have some of the major limitations. Other than this one of the other major thing that the VPN helps in making a connection anonymous. Hence if there is something is to be done without getting traced the same can be done using the same. One of the other major benefit of using Virtual private networks is that, the organisational can control the incoming and outgoing traffic of the organisation. This enables to track all the nessecery transactions. The VPN also lets the management of the organisation to set up different IP addresses for all the machines that are present in the organisation and hence tracking the same also becomes very much easier.

This paper describes what virtual private network is and how these can be used for the process of secured transmissions. This paper also describes the security issues that are related to the VPN services. Further this paper describes the major differences between the extranet and intranet virtual private networks. The major different kind of the IP addresses techniques are also explained in the papers.

Although the VPN seems to be one of the most secured service that have been developed but yet there are some of the major limitations in using these. This paper explains the property that helps in the process of the ensuring and using the network security [1].  The network design can help to understand how the data flows through the system and using the VPN can help in the process of secured transmissions. VPN also helps in the process of encrypting information in between the computer systems and VPN servers. There are three types of the virtual private network services that are available in present time, namely

• Remote Access Virtual Private Network
• Intranet Virtual Private Network
• Extranet Virtual Private Network

One of the major limitation of using the Virtual private network is that it makes the internet connection slower that the obtained speed.

In order to establish a proper connection in between the remote branch and the local office the most important need is the use of the firewall between the connections [2].  There is a need of the hardware like the servers and the work stations. The most important thing that is required is the internet connections. Further the VPN enabled routers and switches are required for the process.

Security issues related to VPN services

The logical design shows the interconnection of the all the work stations and devices connected using the firewall [2]. This ensures that all the data in the local office as well as the head office are safe and are encrypted. In this system the connection from the main internet provider is comes passing through a firewall which is directly connected with the head offices.

The physical design shows the contention in between the headquarters hubs and the branch offices spokes through a secure tunnel connections. The virtual private networks hubs and spokes helps in the process of secured connections using a central VPN router. This helps the employees of the organization to access the main network directly.

The VPN has two kind of the topologies that are present, intranet VPN and the extranet VPN.

The intranet VPN and how the intranet VPN helps in the process of securing the connection between the service provider and the workstations.

In case of the intranet connection, the main office transfers information using the VPN routers through secure tunnels [3]. These signals are then received by the remote offices and using router and these are then used. The primary benefits of the using the intranet are, it helps in the reducing the bandwidth of the wireless area networks or the WAN. Further, the cost of the same is also very low. Connection of new sites becomes easier in case of the intranet connections. It also helps in increasing network uptime by enabling WAN link redundancy across service providers  

The use of the extranet virtual private network connection between the main office and the business partner office. The extranet VPN can be called more secure that the intranet virtual private network [1]. In case of the extranet VPN for enabling the connections there are needs for the dial up connections in order to enhance the security. Unlike the intranet there is a middle dial up partner and hence the connections are most secured. This helps in the process to ensure that the connection always comes through the dial up section and hence the identity of the connection can be easily accessed.

Subnet Name	Needed Size	Allocated Size	Address	Mask	Dec Mask	Assignable Range	Broadcast
HQ	100	126	192.168.8.0	/25	255.255.255.128	192.168.8.1 – 192.168.8.126	192.168.8.127
RB	50	62	192.168.8.128	/26	255.255.255.192	192.168.8.129 – 192.168.8.190	192.168.8.191
RB	50	62	192.168.8.192	/26	255.255.255.192	192.168.8.193 – 192.168.8.254	192.168.8.255
R1-ISP	2	2	192.168.9.0	/30	255.255.255.252	192.168.9.1 – 192.168.9.2	192.168.9.3
R1-R2	2	2	192.168.9.4	/30	255.255.255.252	192.168.9.5 – 192.168.9.6	192.168.9.7
R1-R3	2	2	192.168.9.8	/30	255.255.255.252	192.168.9.9 – 192.168.9.10	192.168.9.11

The above table is showing the IP addressing schema for the organization. Total 5 subnet is Used in the above table. One is for the headquarter, and other two is for the two-remote office. One subnet is used for the HQ router to ISP and another two subnets are used in between the HQ and remote office router.

Types of VPN: Intranet and Extranet

This is one of the major thin that is to be done [3]. The major point of IP addressing is that every device that is connected in the network is having a unique IP address. This makes sure that every device is uniquely identified. If there is any case of fraud then this makes sure that there is no problem in ensuring the correct device. There three types of IP addressing that can be done, namely as

• aaa- The aaa retrieves addresses from external authentication servers. If the organisation is are using authentication servers that has IP addresses configured.
• Dhcp- the DHCP or the dynamic host control protocol, retrieves information form the DHCP servers.
• Local: This uses the local addresses polling system.

The Virtual private network provides some of the major security features and policies. One of the most important security feature that the VPN provides is encrypting the messages in between the router and the servers. Other than this it is very easier to add or remove any user from the system. Further it helps in decreasing the costs f the telecommunications. There are three major components of the VPN, protocols, security and applications [4]. All these helps in the process of ensuring proper and safe interconnections. One of the other major security feature of the VPN is the scalability feature of the VPN. The services of the virtual private networks are flexible and are easily accessible thorough new infrastructures. IN terms of cost, a good VPN can cost very high but this is a one time investment and service goes on for long duration of time. Operating a virtual private network within an organization costs are significantly lower than other types of configurations.

The redundant VPN tunnel helps in the process to maintain a constant interconnection in between the HQ and the local offices.  It also helps to minimize the effect of any hardware crashes or disruptions, which in turn increases the constancy and dependability of VPN tunnels over the Internet

In certain case if the service of the VPN fails then the first thing is to ensure that all the communication must be stopped. Further, use of the normal connections must be avoided in order to ensure security.

As explained the VPN service helps in the process of ensuing that the interconnection of two offices in a secured manner [5]. In order to properly implement the VPN service there are needs to ensure that the main connection between the two offices are connected through the firewall. This ensures that there is always a redundant connection in between the main office and the local offices. The use of the VPN enables the access of the internet using a secured channels. The use of hubs and spokes makes it easier to properly access these information.

Conclusion

Thus concluding the topic it can be said that the use of the virtual private network helps in the process of securing the servers of an organisation and helps in maintaining data security. The virtual private network helps in the process of enhancing the security services with the use of the secure medium. Further it can be said that the use of the VPN service helps in the process to ensure that the connections are always encrypted so that data cannot be overridden while using a VPN. The use of the extranet virtual private network can help in further making the services more secured. The dial up process of the extranet service makes the connections more secured and are more highly encrypted. 

References:

[1] Sinha, Sanjib. “Virtual Private Network or VPN.” In Beginning Ethical Hacking with Python, pp. 185-189. Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2017.

[2] Raeespour, Akram Kargar, and Ahmed Moosajee Patel. “Design and Evaluation of a Virtual Private Network Architecture for Collaborating Specialist Users.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Information Technology and Multimedia 5, no. 1 (2016).

[3] Jangid, Manoj, and Prakriti Trivedi. “Improve Performance of Successive Ratio for Virtual Private Network.” In Computational Intelligence and Communication Networks (CICN), 2016 8th International Conference on, pp. 97-101. IEEE, 2016.

[4] Nurcahyaningsih, Shinta, Rendy Munadi, Sofia Naning Hertiana, and Taufik Hasan. “Transport Solution Based on Layer 3 MPLS-Virtual Private Network to Support IP Connectivity in Long Term Evolution Mobile Back-Haul.” Advanced Science Letters 20, no. 2 (2014): 386-390.

[5] Lodi, Andrea, and Ahmad Moradi. “Experiments on virtual private network design with concave capacity costs.” Optimization Letters 12, no. 5 (2018): 945-957.