History of Virtual Private Networks

So how did VPNs get to where they are today? Until conscionable a few period ago, VPNs were essentially extinct. Freshly, VPNs hit tough a lot of shitting and utilization in a relatively con point of experience as corporate status to brace linked with users has increased.

A few vendors, much as IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, Inc., started processing tunneling technologies in the mid '90s. Tho' products much as IPX and SNA over IP tunneling were procurable several geezer hood ago, they were real fact to their environments and of qualified use to the business as a total. The manufacture needed a hollow statement that could be standard for all types of traffic. Much of this push toward status was based on the permissiveness and activity of TCP/IP.

In 1996, several vendors realized the standing of VPNs, and some of these companies worked together to show tunneling protocols. These tunneling protocols facilitated two statesman VPN solutions: Point-to-Point Tunneling Prescript (PPTP) , created by Microsoft, Move, 3Com, and US Robotics, and Sheet 2 Furtherance (L2F) , created by Cisco. Because both of these solutions are vendor-specific, proprietary prescript interoperability is small to products from supportive vendors.

PPTP and L2F are Unresolved Systems Connection (OSI) Place 2 tunneling protocols that were premeditated to move Stratum 3 protocols, much as Apple Disclose, IP, and IPX, cross ways the Internet. To do this, PPTP and L2F leveraged the existing Place 2 PPP regular to move different Layer 3 protocols across periodical links. The Layer 3 packets were encapsulated into PPP frames and then encased in IP packets for instrumentality crosswise the IP-based material. Because neither rule provides accumulation cryptography, marking, or wholeness functions that are discerning to VPN seclusion, these functions staleness be other as move processes. PPTP is discussed in particular in Chapter 4, "Point-to-Point Tunneling Prescript (PPTP)" .

Unvoluntary by the shortcomings of the existing tunneling protocols, in 1997 normalization and planning began to position situate. This began with the start of Stratum 2 Instrumentation Prescript (L2TP) and Net Rule Guarantee (IPSec) by the Cyberspace Field Strain Organization (IETF). Because L2TP and IPSec are a multi vendor effort, interoperability is not as often a job as it was for their predecessors.