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> You are wrong on this, the private part indicates the privacy it provides not the destination. Sorry - that's just not the case, you're retconning VPN termin

> You are wrong on this, the private part indicates the privacy it provides not the destination. Sorry - that's just not the case, you're retconning VPN terminology. VPNs were originally implemented to replace dedicated WANs and dial-in access to private networks - they were not originally designed to provide privacy for individual access to the Internet. Heck, even the RFC for VPN terminology makes that clear (RFC 2764 is over 20 years old). Oh, and this: > There have always been client-access VPNs If your first exposure to VPNs was from shady privacy-snake-oil salesmen, I can see how you'd think this, but take it from the people who were there before client based VPN access was even a thing: Site-to-Site VPN was the original use case for VPN, and you didn't waste tunnel bandwidth (encryption chips were slow and expensive back in the day) routing general internet traffic over your tunnel...

autoexec 4y ago
> Heck, even the RFC for VPN terminology makes that clear (RFC 2764 is over 20 years old). What it actually says is: The widespread deployment of VPNs has been hampered, however, by the lack of interoperable implementations, which, in turn, derives from the lack of general agreement on the definition and scope of VPNs and confusion over the wide variety of solutions that are all described by the term VPN. Some people's ideas of the definition and scope of "VPN" might have involved the requirement that it terminate on a private network, but others would not.
_8j50 4y ago
No one ever called GRE or 6-in-4 a VPN, why is that!? Let me copy paste my other comment: Read the acronym carefully. It is virtual and it is a network. Not the destination but the tunnel itself is the network that is private. It was described as such from the start and in no networking context have I ever heard otherwise (correct me if wrong please). Let's say you have an IPSec tunnel between a branch location and HQ site. The typical solution was GRE where you encapsulate it inside another IP packet that has public IPs only for the destination to decapsulate it. When VPNs came along they added privacy hence the name. In networking you are not connecting two networks. You are interconnecting three networks! the branch would have its own subnet so would HQ but the VPN also would have its subnet all routed as separate networks. The tunnel network getting privacy because it traverses untrusted networks (back in the day it wasn't typically the interent but ATM, frame relay,T1,etc... "directly" between sites), that's where term cloud comes from FYI the untrusted magic ISP network in the sky.

autoexec 4y ago

> Heck, even the RFC for VPN terminology makes that clear (RFC 2764 is over 20 years old). What it actually says is: The widespread deployment of VPNs has been hampered, however, by the lack of interoperable implementations, which, in turn, derives from the lack of general agreement on the definition and scope of VPNs and confusion over the wide variety of solutions that are all described by the term VPN. Some people's ideas of the definition and scope of "VPN" might have involved the requirement that it terminate on a private network, but others would not.

_8j50 4y ago

No one ever called GRE or 6-in-4 a VPN, why is that!? Let me copy paste my other comment: Read the acronym carefully. It is virtual and it is a network. Not the destination but the tunnel itself is the network that is private. It was described as such from the start and in no networking context have I ever heard otherwise (correct me if wrong please). Let's say you have an IPSec tunnel between a branch location and HQ site. The typical solution was GRE where you encapsulate it inside another IP packet that has public IPs only for the destination to decapsulate it. When VPNs came along they added privacy hence the name. In networking you are not connecting two networks. You are interconnecting three networks! the branch would have its own subnet so would HQ but the VPN also would have its subnet all routed as separate networks. The tunnel network getting privacy because it traverses untrusted networks (back in the day it wasn't typically the interent but ATM, frame relay,T1,etc... "directly" between sites), that's where term cloud comes from FYI the untrusted magic ISP network in the sky.