Talk:Virtual private network

Textbooks and conflict of interest

I've written books in this area, but wanted to leave it to others to recommend appropriate references or further reading. I happen to think they are informative on customer and provider VPN relationships :-). For the customer side, WAN Survival Guide (Wiley, 2001), and for the provider side, Building Service Provider Networks (Wiley, 2002).

I did put in a public domain, very basic tutorial. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:18, 14 July 2008 (CDT)

Query

The current initial definition reads: "A virtual private network (VPN) a set of sites, owned by customers, which are connected through some type of backbone." I think that is seriously misleading. Yes, there are quite a few VPNs to which that definition applies, but it does not seem general enough.

I'd prefer something like "A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a network which can safely be used as if it were private, even though some of its communication uses insecure connections. All traffic on those connections is encrypted."

To my way of thinking, the current article is clear and well-written, but mostly wrong as a general description of VPNs. Provider-based VPNs are an important class of VPN, but they should be described either under a sub-heading or in a separate article, not as the main VPN article.

However, I thought I'd ask here before making major changes Sandy Harris 08:54, 1 August 2008 (CDT)