An analysis of virtual private network solutions

VPN services have been available for decades but not widely used until recently. A combination of new VPN technologies, network technologies and business communication requirements is the driving force behind the take-up of VPN services. This paper gives an overview of recent VPN solutions and analyses their scalability and flexibility. VPN solutions are categorized and related to potential customer segments. Furthermore, measurements based on a large north-American carrier´s backbone are presented. The results show that provision of a moderate number of large VPNs puts higher constraints on the provider network than a large number of moderately sized VPNs.