Help me understand VPNs

[bodean]

I see a lot of talk about people using VPNs. I am wondering if it is something I would benefit on using. Background, I have a home PC and a NAS, with an ASUS AC66U router (which does VPN). I am an airline pilot, on the road a lot with my MacBook Air, using free wifi's at hotels. Would a VPN be something I should be using to ensure safe/secure connections with on hotel wifi's?

 

[CaptainSTX]

Vpn

VPNs have many advantages. There real purpose is to provide more secure communications on the Internet by encrypting your traffic.

VPNs can be used in several ways:

You can run a VPN on your home router and a VPN client on your PC. With this setup you can have a very secure encrypted connection from your PC to your home network.

Another option is to sign up with a VPN provider and run your or their VPN client software on your PC. Then when you sign onto the internet using WiFi in hotels coffee shops, airports, etc. you are better protected from signing onto a "faked" WiFi access point that has the ability to log all your traffice and perhaps steal passwords. When I go into an Admirals Club and see various SSIDs how can I tell if I am signing onto an access point run by AA or Joe the hacker sitting in a chair across from me?

The VPN provided by a vendor (for a monthly fee ) can also be run on your home router to partially secure your Internet traffic. Once it leaves the server of the VPN provider it is in the clear again and is no longer encrypted. I use this setup figuring some protection is better than none and when using a VPN my ISP has no idea who or where I am connecting with.

It is possible to run both types of VPN simultaneously on your router if you have the skills to write the custom scripts. People have done it and you search on this site you can see what they had to do.

Running either type of VPN on your router will slow your Internet speeds down as the processor and RAM are not really up to the task.

Use the OpenVPN protocol on your routers and PCs as PPTP encryption has been broken. I only use PPTP on my phones when in public places and then I never connect to sensitive web sites like banks and brokerages. OpenVPN can be run on phones, but I find it isn't worth the trouble if you just want to check your e-mail and people don't send you top secrete information like the formula for Coke as an attachment.

 

[stevech]

I see a lot of talk about people using VPNs. I am wondering if it is something I would benefit on using. Background, I have a home PC and a NAS, with an ASUS AC66U router (which does VPN). I am an airline pilot, on the road a lot with my MacBook Air, using free wifi's at hotels. Would a VPN be something I should be using to ensure safe/secure connections with on hotel wifi's?

VPN is essentially a tunnel through which flows all your interaction with an internet host (including your NAS with a VPN server). The tunnel is usually encrypted and both you and the other end have "digital certificates" that allow each end to know if the other end may be an imposter, i.e., there is mutual authentication.

When on your PC, and you do a web browser HTTPS access to, say, your bank, that's similar to a VPN connection - but only web browser activities can occur. With a VPN connection with the tunnel, it's like there's a new network port on your PC that's connected to the far end. Any/all things you do with that far end host go through this trusted tunnel - web browsing, file transfers, special application programs, etc.

Corporations often use VPNs for their telecommuting employees to access systems inside the corporate firewall.

Most NAS interactions you'd have can be browser based via HTTPS (If you config. the NAS for HTTPS (SSL)) and VPN is not essential for the NAS, just as it isn't for accessing your bank account and doing browser based transactions.