What Is A VPN?

Date First Published: 28th January 2022

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Setups

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using A VPN
History Of VPNs
Examples Of VPNs

Learn more about what a VPN is in this article.

Not to be confused with a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

Short for a virtual private network, a VPN provides a secure and private connection over a public, business, or home network by connecting to a server and changing the IP address, which is known as establishing an encrypted tunnel. All traffic is encrypted by the VPN, helping to protect people's online privacy and anonymity. VPNs are also known to provide secure connections, much more secure than public network connections. When connecting to a VPN over a network, all sensitive information, such as financial details are encrypted, which provides protection for people's online safety. A diagram that shows the structure of a VPN can be seen below.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using A VPN

The advantages of using a VPN are:

It hides people’s real IP addresses that could be used for revealing their location.
It encrypts traffic sent from the computer to the network, so it cannot be read by anyone.
It is very useful if public Wi-Fi is being used when entering sensitive information, such as financial data as a VPN will encrypt that data as well as secure the network.
It can unblock websites that are blocked in one’s country, work, or school - Some websites use the IP address of users to determine their country and will block access to their website if they come from a certain country. Websites that are blocked by one's work or school can also be unblocked.
It allows people to browse the internet without being tracked or monitored by third parties since the IP address changes every time the VPN connects, which helps to protect people’s online privacy.
It can prevent data throttling, which is when the internet service provider makes a decision to slow the internet speed down when a certain amount of data has been used.
It can prevent bandwidth throttling, which is similar to data throttling. Bandwidth throttling is when the internet service provider intentionally slows down the user’s data transmission when a certain amount of bandwidth is used.

The disadvantages of using a VPN are:

Slower internet connection - VPNs have to encrypt data, which is known as the encryption process. As a result, this will decrease the speed of the internet connection.
There can be privacy issues - Some VPNs, (not all of them since most have a strict 'no log' policy) can excessively collect people's data and sell it to third parties that will misuse it.

History Of VPNs

VPNs have been around since 1996. In 1996, employees of Microsoft created a peer-to-peer tunnelling protocol, which was a way of encrypting data and building a tunnel through a LAN or WAN connection in order to create a secure network between users. This protocol made it possible to securely send sensitive data over public networks.

Examples Of VPNs

Some free VPNs include Windscribe, TouchVPN, ProtonVPN, and TunnelBear. Some paid VPNs include ExpressVPN, Avast Secureline VPN, Cyberghost, and Surfshark. This is not a full list of every VPN. There are a lot of other VPN providers.