Enough! Which VPN Is Best for Me? Tell Me or Get Lost! – Part 1

Don’t know about you guys but I am fed of reading gazillioans of articles on VPN and their types and their forms and their everything else! We discuss so much that we end up generating loads of useless content. I agree that more content means more knowledge but at least tell me how to chose the best instead of telling me your style of best? I mean, c’mon, guys? I have my own requirements and I want to opt for my best VPN not some so-called critics best VPN.

Okay! The above para was just random rant but it is true. We don’t get what we really search for in Google. This is why I have taken matters in my hand. I am no alpha geek and I don’t know what .DLL files are doing in my System32 folder but I got brains and today I will try to use a part of the same to make life easy for all of us.

It’s time for business.

IPsec style of VPN has ruled around for long till their was nothing like SSL. I will not know what you think and what are your requirements so I will try my best to touch base with the pros and cons of all types of VPNs. The ball will be in your court after the two part series is wrapped up. Think before you decide.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

I discussed about SSL in my last article itself and I wasn’t sure that I will end up throwing more light on the same all over again. If you ask me to summarize this quickly then SSL is responsible to create a secure session between your browser and the destination. In reality SSL is like proxy in most of the cases.

Important point worth a note is SSL is smart at encrypting end-to-end traffic which means it can bypass firewalls, load balancing devices, Intrusion Prevention Systems and other different types of network management systems. This means that SSL might just become a headache for you in some cases henceforth it is suggested that you do your research before implementing SSL style of VPN.

Golden Tip: SSL will add overhead on your servers henceforth I will suggest you to offload it to some proxy and then route the network traffic via your secure corporate network.

The advantage of SSL style VPN is that their won’t be any third party software required as default installation for SSL to work even at users end. This makes it easy to use SSL anywhere. The disadvantage is that if you somehow need access to something that isn’t present on the web then you might want an intervention by another layer as SSL provides security for web based apps only.

MPLS

In between all the discussion I do not want you to forget MPLS VPNs. They might not work for individual users in case of remote access but they end up being the best in business for site-to-site connectivity. The quick advantage worth mentioning is that MPLS is scalable and very flexible.

All the configuration is done at the network level so the end user will see the obvious network connectivity only. MPLS supports QoS as well as multicast so one really need not worry about which app the end user will need access to and which needs to be restricted.

A big disadvantage that comes with MPLS is that it cannot be set up smoothly and you will end up facing hurdles all the time.

More still to come

I had to divide this article into multiple article series as I know it isn’t easy for you to consume the information. Stay tight as a lot more is still coming in our mad series of finding the best VPN for you!

Salman Siddiqui is an expert technology analyst and regularly blogs on his tech. blog CompuWorld. His vast experience of freelance writing is backed by his passion to swim against the tide. You can grab him on Twitter.