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 VPN is a technology for connecting two or more trusted networks together using a third, untrusted, network in such a way that the combined network can be trusted."

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 as 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)