What are the benefits of a VPN? [closed]

Question

I've never quite understood the purpose and benefits of a VPN, and after reading the Wikipedia article, it's not any clearer to me. I've never used a VPN before, so this is likely why I'm having trouble grasping it's use.

What can the use of a VPN provide when used on a home network, or when connected via a mobile device such as an Android phone?

Answer 1

VPN protects your communications from being intercepted as they pass through the Internet.
Being encoded, they are protected in that when they are intercepted, on the way between you and the VPN server, then they can't be read.

When connecting between two machines situated inside the home network, presumably behind a firewall, you don't gain much.

It's only when you connect from your local network to the outside that you may want this added protection.

Of course, the principal agent you're protecting yourself here from is your Internet Service Provider ...

Answer 2

In layman's terms, the usual use for a VPN is to connect to a private network as if you were within that network. I.e., to connect to your work network from your home computer as if you were at work - or to connect to your home network from the wireless at the coffeeshop as if you were at home.

There are a lot of other things to consider, such as making sure nobody can use that connection to infiltrate the network you're connecting to (that's where the encryption comes in), and the way various operations will behave over a "longer distance" (higher latency) - but that's the short version.

Answer 3

Assuming you need to communicate between two or more devices across a public network, a VPN ensures a private channel which cannot be eavesdropped by other devices on the public network. So if your computer at home needs to connect to your computer at work, you may do this over the internet by establishing a VPN. No other computer on the internet will be able to use or eavesdrop on your connection.

A VPN has no use inside a home network, unless there is a need for separate communications between computers, or as a means to guarantee added security by isolating certain portions of the home network from others.

In this light, VPNs have a more common use in working environments where they are often used as a means to connect office city branches, or as a means to establish different network environments within an office.

Answer 4

Yep, VPNs are basically for accessing trusted systems (your LAN) over a public, untrusted network (the internet). Basically, the idea is simply to reuse public wires which have already been laid for the internet, instead of paying for separate, private communication wires (dedicated lines, which cost a lot of money).

The problem, of course, is that, on the internet, you can't trust the wires. Anyone could be listening in on what is sent from your laptop at home to your desktop at work, if it's being sent over the internet.

So, what you do, very simply, is make a "fake" wire (an encrypted virtual network) on top of the existing, public, real wires. You set this up so your computer routes network traffic over it, just like it was a normal network connection.

And that's about it really. The rest is just technical details of how the encryption works, how the routing is done, etc.

p.s.: Wherever I said "wires" (meaning real wires) you can also substitute "radio links" if you have wireless networks.

Answer 5

One of the uses of a vpn is when you're traveling outside the country and still want to have the luxury of all your internet services. For example, netflix is blocked in australia. but if you log in to your vpn account you can watch netflix while in the land down under because you are virtually using a US server of your choice. your IP address will be that of a US server of your choice..also useful here in the US if you dont want your IP adrress known...