Virtual Private Networks: Technologies and Solutions

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) take advantage of the Internet's low-cost data communications capabilities by sending network traffic (internal network traffic, of the sort traditionally sent over private data links) through the public data cloud. The money savings, however, comes with the need to make sure that the potentially sensitive information is properly protected during its trip through open channels. Virtual Private Networks: Technologies and Solutions examines this engineering challenge in heavily researched and thickly referenced detail, providing network architects with tons of information about the problems that exist, the technologies that have been developed to solve those problems, and the products vendors offer to implement those technologies.

Authors Ruixi Yuan and Timothy Strayer take a scholarly approach: Each topic is introduced, and new terms described, as the functions of each piece in VPN systems are explained. Books and papers relevant to the topic are referenced frequently, along with standards documents, and the book uses pseudocode and mathematical expressions to explain encryption and authentication. If you study the book--along with the other publications-carefully, you'll be rewarded with a deep understanding of how to build a good VPN. --David Wall

Topics covered: The state of the art in virtual private networks (VPNs), with special coverage of tunneling (via PPTP, L2F, L2TP, IPsec, and MPLS), the IPsec protocol, authentication, public key infrastructure (PKI), gateways, and clients. VPNs for static links as well as for remote access solutions are covered.