Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Are you looking for a cheap, secure way to connect remote offices and workers to headquarters? You may need a Virtual Private Network (VPN) from IKANO. IKANO's VPNs connect two or more locations, over the Internet, in a way that offers high security at a reasonable cost.

A VPN is a network that utilizes dedicated lines or the Internet as its Wide Area Network (WAN) backbone. In a VPN, dial-up connections to remote users and leased line or Frame Relay connections to remote sites are replaced by local connections to an Internet service provider (ISP) point of presence (POP).

A VPN allows a private intranet to be securely extended across the Internet or other network service, facilitating secure e-commerce and extranet connections with business partners, suppliers and customers.

Some companies rely on VPNs to link branch offices. The technology's most popular use is to connect employees to a corporate network from home or on the road. At home, employees with a dial-up or broadband connection to the Web can use a VPN to connect to their company's computers. And when employees are on the road, they can avoid dialing long distance to headquarters by simply reaching the Internet via a local access number to connect to the company network.

College students, for example, who live off-campus, could also access the campus network through a VPN. The school's network services, including remote access to library databases, enterprise database access, plus several other campus network services, would become accessible without ever stepping foot on campus.

Until VPN technology came along, most companies linked branch offices to one another via leased lines -- wires rented from the telephone company to connect, for example, the San Francisco office to the Toronto office. That amounts to renting a fraction of the capacity on the network providers network of wire and fiber lines, which can run to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per month.

Here's how IKANO's VPN technology works. Most communication over the Internet is far from private -- anyone can read your messages, provided they know where to look. VPN technology addresses this problem through a technique called tunneling -- encrypting the data before sending it over the Internet, then decrypting it on the other end. Users on either end have, in effect, a private tunnel of communication with one another.

It is possible that someone could intercept the data as it traverses the Internet, but what they intercept would be encrypted data that they would not be able to read. Only the intended recipient can decipher the message. As a safeguard against unauthorized access, IKANO's VPNs also use passwords, digital certificates, and other technologies to make sure the parties on each end are who they say they are.