Virtual private network

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A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network that is layered on top of an underlying
computer network. The private nature of a VPN means that the data travelling over the VPN is
not generally visible to, or is encapsulated from, the underlying network traffic. This is done with
strong encryption, as VPN's are commonly deployed to be high-security "network tunnels".
Similarly, the traffic within the VPN appears to the underlying network as just another traffic
stream to be passed. If you can envision secured "pipe" within the wire that is your connection,
you would be well on your way to picturing a VPN deployment, if perhaps oversimplified.

In more technical terms, the link layer protocols of the virtual network are said to be tunneled
through the underlying transport network.

The term VPN can be used to describe many different network configurations and protocols. As
such, it can become complex when trying to generalise about the characteristics of a VPN. Some
of the more common uses of VPNs are described below, along with more detail about the various
classification schemes and VPN models.

Contents
[hide]

 1 VPN classifications
o 1.1 Secure VPN vs Trusted VPN
o 1.2 Categorization by user administrative relationships
o 1.3 Internet Protocol tunnels
 2 Security mechanisms
o 2.1 Authentication
 3 Routing
o 3.1 Building blocks
 4 User-visible PPVPN services
o 4.1 OSI Layer 1 services
 4.1.1 Virtual private wire and private line services (VPWS and VPLS)
 o 4.2 OSI Layer 2 services
o 4.3 OSI Layer 3 PPVPN architectures
 5 Trusted delivery networks
 6 VPNs in mobile environments
 7 See also
 8 References

[edit] VPN classifications

VPN technologies are not easily compared, due to the myriad of protocols, terminologies and
marketing influences that have defined them. For example, VPN technologies can differ:

 In the protocols they use to tunnel the traffic over the underlying network;
 By the location of tunnel termination, such as the customer edge or network provider
edge;
 Whether they offer site-to-site or remote access connectivity;
 In the levels of security provided;
 By the OSI layer which they present to the connecting network, such as Layer 2 circuits
or Layer 3 network connectivity.

Some classification schemes are discussed in the following sections.

[edit] Secure VPN vs Trusted VPN

The industry group 'Virtual Private Networking Consortium' have defined two types of VPN
classifications, Secure VPNs and Trusted VPNs[1]. The consortium includes members such as
Cisco, D-Link, Juniper and many others[2].

Secure VPNs explicitly provide mechanisms for authentication of the tunnel endpoints during
tunnel setup, and encryption of the traffic in transit. Often secure VPNs are used to protect traffic
when using the Internet as the underlying backbone, but equally they may be used in any
environment when the security level of the underlying network differs from the traffic within the
VPN.

Secure VPNs may be implemented by organizations wishing to provide remote access facilities
to their employees or by organizations wishing to connect multiple networks together securely
using the Internet to carry the traffic. A common use for secure VPNs is in remote access
scenarios, where VPN client software on an end user system is used to connect to a remote office
network securely. Secure VPN protocols include IPSec, L2TP (with IPsec for traffic encryption),
SSL/TLS VPN (with SSL/TLS) or PPTP (with MPPE).

Trusted VPNs are commonly created by carriers and large organizations and are used for traffic
segmentation on large core networks. They often provide quality of service guarantees and other
carrier-grade features. Trusted VPNs may be implemented by network carriers wishing to
multiplex multiple customer connections transparently over an existing core network or by large
organizations wishing to segregate traffic flows from each other in the network. Trusted VPN
protocols include MPLS, ATM or Frame Relay.

Trusted VPNs differ from secure VPNs in that they do not provide security features such as data
confidentiality through encryption. Secure VPNs however do not offer the level of control of the
data flows that a trusted VPN can provide such as bandwidth guarantees or routing.

From a customer perspective, a trusted VPN may act as a logical wire connecting two networks.
The underlying carrier network is not visible to the customer, nor is the customer aware of the
presence of other customers traversing the same backbone. Interference between customers, or
interference with the backbone itself, is not possible from within a trusted VPN.

Some Internet service providers offer managed VPN service for business customers who want
the security and convenience of a VPN but prefer not to undertake administering a VPN server
themselves. Managed secure VPNs are again a hybrid of the two major VPN models, and are a
contracted security solution that can reach into hosts. In addition to providing remote workers
with secure access to their employer's internal network, other security and management services
are sometimes included as part of the package. Examples include keeping anti-virus and anti-
spyware programs updated on each connecting computer or ensuring particular software patches
are installed before connection is permitted.

[edit] Categorization by user administrative relationships

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has categorized a variety of VPNs, some of which,
such as Virtual LANs (VLAN) are the standardization responsibility of other organizations, such
as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Project 802, Workgroup 802.1
(architecture). Originally, wide area network (WAN) links from a telecommunications service
provider interconnected network nodes within a single enterprise. With the advent of LANs,
enterprises could interconnect their nodes with links that they owned. While the original WANs
used dedicated lines and layer 2 multiplexed services such as Frame Relay, IP-based layer 3
networks, such as the ARPANET, Internet, military IP networks (NIPRNet, SIPRNet, JWICS,
etc.), became common interconnection media. VPNs began to be defined over IP networks.[3]
The military networks may themselves be implemented as VPNs on common transmission
equipment, but with separate encryption and perhaps routers.

It became useful first to distinguish among different kinds of IP VPN based on the administrative
relationships (rather than the technology) interconnecting the nodes. Once the relationships were
defined, different technologies could be used, depending on requirements such as security and
quality of service.

When an enterprise interconnects a set of nodes, all under its administrative control, through a
LAN, that is termed an intranet.[4] When the interconnected nodes are under multiple
administrative authorities but are hidden from the public Internet, the resulting set of nodes is
called an extranet. A user organization can manage both intranets and extranets itself, or
negotiate a service as a contracted (and usually customized) offering from an IP service provider.
In the latter case, the user organization contracts for layer 3 services – much as it may contract
for layer 1 services such as dedicated lines, or multiplexed layer 2 services such as frame relay.

IETF documents distinguish between provider-provisioned and customer-provisioned VPNs.[5]

Just as an interconnected and set of providers can supply conventional WAN services, so a single
service provider can supply provider-provisioned VPNs (PPVPNs), presenting a common point-
of-contact to the user organization.

[edit] Internet Protocol tunnels

Main article: Tunneling protocol

Some customer-managed virtual networks may not use encryption to protect the data contents.
These types of overlay networks do not neatly fit within the secure or trusted categorization. An
example of such an overlay network could be a GRE tunnel, set up between two hosts. This
tunneling would still be a form of virtual private network yet is neither a secure nor a trusted
VPN.

Examples of native plaintext tunneling protocols include GRE, L2TP (without IPsec) and PPTP
(without MPPE).

[edit] Security mechanisms

Secure VPNs use cryptographic tunneling protocols to provide the intended confidentiality
(blocking intercept and thus packet sniffing), sender authentication (blocking identity spoofing),
and message integrity (blocking message alteration) to achieve privacy.

Secure VPN protocols include the following:

 IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) - A standards-based security protocol developed

originally for IPv6, where support is mandatory, but also widely used with IPv4. For
VPNs L2TP is commonly used over IPsec.
 Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) is used either for tunneling an entire network's
traffic (SSL/TLS VPN), as in the OpenVPN project, or for securing individual
connection. SSL has been the foundation by a number of vendors to provide remote
access VPN capabilities. A practical advantage of an SSL VPN is that it can be accessed
from locations that restrict external access to SSL-based e-commerce websites without
IPsec implementations. SSL-based VPNs may be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks
mounted against their TCP connections because latter are inherently unauthenticated.
 Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), used by Cisco for a next generation VPN
product called Cisco AnyConnect VPN. DTLS solves the issues found when tunneling
TCP over TCP as is the case with SSL/TLS
 Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption (MPPE) by Microsoft is used with their PPTP.
Several compatible implementations on other platforms also exist.
  Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) by Microsoft introduced in Windows Server
2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1. SSTP tunnels PPP or L2TP traffic through an
SSL 3.0 channel.
 MPVPN (Multi Path Virtual Private Network). Ragula Systems Development Company
owns the registered trademark "MPVPN".[6]
 SSH VPN -- OpenSSH offers VPN tunneling to secure remote connections to a network
(or inter-network links). This feature (option -w) should not be confused with port
forwarding (option -L/-R/-D). OpenSSH server provides limited number of concurrent
tunnels and the VPN feature itself does not support personal authentication.[7][8][9]

[edit] Authentication

Tunnel endpoints are required to authenticate themselves before secure VPN tunnels can be
established. End user created tunnels, such as remote access VPNs may use passwords,
biometrics, two-factor authentication or other cryptographic methods. For network-to-network
tunnels, passwords or digital certificates are often used, as the key must be permanently stored
and not require manual intervention for the tunnel to be established automatically.

[edit] Routing
Tunneling protocols can be used in a point-to-point topology that would generally not be
considered a VPN, because a VPN is expected to support arbitrary and changing sets of network
nodes. Since most router implementations support software-defined tunnel interface, customer-
provisioned VPNs often comprise simply a set of tunnels over which conventional routing
protocols run. PPVPNs, however, need to support the coexistence of multiple VPNs, hidden
from one another, but operated by the same service provider.

[edit] Building blocks

Depending on whether the PPVPN runs in layer 2 or layer 3, the building blocks described below
may be L2 only, L3 only, or combinations of the two. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
functionality blurs the L2-L3 identity.

While RFC 4026 generalized these terms to cover L2 and L3 VPNs, they were introduced in
RFC 2547.[10]

Customer edge device. (CE)

In general, a CE is a device, physically at the customer premises, that provides access to the
PPVPN service. Some implementations treat it purely as a demarcation point between provider
and customer responsibility, while others allow customers to configure it.

Provider edge device (PE)

A PE is a device or set of devices, at the edge of the provider network, which provides the
provider's view of the customer site. PEs are aware of the VPNs that connect through them, and
which maintain VPN state.

Provider device (P)

A P device operates inside the provider's core network, and does not directly interface to any
customer endpoint. It might, for example, provide routing for many provider-operated tunnels
that belong to different customers' PPVPNs. While the P device is a key part of implementing
PPVPNs, it is not itself VPN-aware and does not maintain VPN state. Its principal role is
allowing the service provider to scale its PPVPN offerings, as, for example, by acting as an
aggregation point for multiple PEs. P-to-P connections, in such a role, often are high-capacity
optical links between major locations of provider.

[edit] User-visible PPVPN services

This section deals with the types of VPN considered in the IETF; some historical names were
replaced by these terms.

[edit] OSI Layer 1 services

[edit] Virtual private wire and private line services (VPWS and VPLS)

In both of these services, the provider does not offer a full routed or bridged network, but
components from which the customer can build customer-administered networks. VPWS are
point-to-point while VPLS can be point-to-multipoint. They can be Layer 1 emulated circuits
with no data link structure.

The customer determines the overall customer VPN service, which also can involve routing,
bridging, or host network elements.

An unfortunate acronym confusion can occur between Virtual Private Line Service and Virtual
Private LAN Service; the context should make it clear whether "VPLS" means the layer 1 virtual
private line or the layer 2 virtual private LAN.

[edit] OSI Layer 2 services

Virtual LAN

A Layer 2 technique that allows for the coexistence of multiple LAN broadcast domains,
interconnected via trunks using the IEEE 802.1Q trunking protocol. Other trunking protocols
have been used but have become obsolete, including Inter-Switch Link (ISL), IEEE 802.10
(originally a security protocol but a subset was introduced for trunking), and ATM LAN
Emulation (LANE).

Virtual private LAN service (VPLS)

Developed by IEEE, VLANs allow multiple tagged LANs to share common trunking. VLANs
frequently comprise only customer-owned facilities. The former[clarification needed] is a layer 1
technology that supports emulation of both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint topologies.
The method discussed here extends Layer 2 technologies such as 802.1d and 802.1q LAN
trunking to run over transports such as Metro Ethernet.

As used in this context, a VPLS is a Layer 2 PPVPN, rather than a private line, emulating the full
functionality of a traditional local area network (LAN). From a user standpoint, a VPLS makes it
possible to interconnect several LAN segments over a packet-switched, or optical, provider core;
a core transparent to the user, making the remote LAN segments behave as one single LAN.

In a VPLS, the provider network emulates a learning bridge, which optionally may include
VLAN service.

Pseudo wire (PW)

PW is similar to VPWS, but it can provide different L2 protocols at both ends. Typically, its
interface is a WAN protocol such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode or Frame Relay. In contrast,
when aiming to provide the appearance of a LAN contiguous between two or more locations, the
Virtual Private LAN service or IPLS would be appropriate.

IP-only LAN-like service (IPLS)

A subset of VPLS, the CE devices must have L3 capabilities; the IPLS presents packets rather
than frames. It may support IPv4 or IPv6.

[edit] OSI Layer 3 PPVPN architectures

This section discusses the main architectures for PPVPNs, one where the PE disambiguates
duplicate addresses in a single routing instance, and the other, virtual router, in which the PE
contains a virtual router instance per VPN. The former approach, and its variants, have gained
the most attention.

One of the challenges of PPVPNs involves different customers using the same address space,
especially the IPv4 private address space[11]. The provider must be able to disambiguate
overlapping addresses in the multiple customers' PPVPNs.

BGP/MPLS PPVPN

In the method defined by RFC 2547, BGP extensions advertise routes in the IPv4 VPN address
family, which are of the form of 12-byte strings, beginning with an 8-byte Route Distinguisher
(RD) and ending with a 4-byte IPv4 address. RDs disambiguate otherwise duplicate addresses in
the same PE.
PEs understand the topology of each VPN, which are interconnected with MPLS tunnels, either
directly or via P routers. In MPLS terminology, the P routers are Label Switch Routers without
awareness of VPNs.

Virtual router PPVPN

The Virtual Router architecture,[12][13] as opposed to BGP/MPLS techniques, requires no

modification to existing routing protocols such as BGP. By the provisioning of logically
independent routing domains, the customer operating a VPN is completely responsible for the
address space. In the various MPLS tunnels, the different PPVPNs are disambiguated by their
label, but do not need routing distinguishers.

Virtual router architectures do not need to disambiguate addresses, because rather than a PE
router having awareness of all the PPVPNs, the PE contains multiple virtual router instances,
which belong to one and only one VPN.

[edit] Trusted delivery networks

Trusted VPNs do not use cryptographic tunneling, and instead rely on the security of a single
provider's network to protect the traffic.

 Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is often used to overlay VPNs, often with
quality-of-service control over a trusted delivery network.
 Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)[14] which is a standards-based replacement, and a
compromise taking the good features from each, for two proprietary VPN protocols:
Cisco's Layer 2 Forwarding (L2F)[15] (obsolete as of 2009) and Microsoft's Point-to-Point
Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).[16]

From the security standpoint, VPNs either trust the underlying delivery network, or must enforce
security with mechanisms in the VPN itself. Unless the trusted delivery network runs only
among physically secure sites, both trusted and secure models need an authentication mechanism
for users to gain access to the VPN.

[edit] VPNs in mobile environments

Main article: Mobile virtual private network

Mobile VPNs handle the special circumstances when an endpoint of the VPN is not fixed to a
single IP address, but instead roams across various networks such as data networks from cellular
carriers or between multiple Wi-Fi access points.[17] Mobile VPNs have been widely used in
public safety, where they give law enforcement officers access to mission-critical applications,
such as computer-assisted dispatch and criminal databases, as they travel between different
subnets of a mobile network.[18] They are also used in field service management and by
healthcare organizations,[19] among other industries.
Increasingly, mobile VPNs are being adopted by mobile professionals and white-collar workers
who need reliable connections.[19] They allow users to roam seamlessly across networks and in
and out of wireless-coverage areas without losing application sessions or dropping the secure
VPN session. A conventional VPN cannot survive such events because the network tunnel is
disrupted, causing applications to disconnect, time out[17], or fail, or even cause the computing
device itself to crash.[19]

Instead of logically tying the endpoint of the network tunnel to the physical IP address, each
tunnel is bound to a permanently associated IP address at the device. The mobile VPN software
handles the necessary network authentication and maintains the network sessions in a manner
transparent to the application and the user.[17] The Host Identity Protocol (HIP), under study by
the Internet Engineering Task Force, is designed to support mobility of hosts by separating the
role of IP addresses for host identification from their locator functionality in an IP network. With
HIP a mobile host maintains its logical connections established via the host identity identifier
while associating with different IP addresses when roaming between access networks.