SSL VPN: Architechture of VPN

On my last 2 posts, I had explained the ‘SSL‘ and the ‘VPN‘. What are they, and what is our purpose of using them. Now, we’ll see VPN Architecture. With a simple diagram, I shall try to make you understand.

Let us take our previous example of John. Here, in the figure, the VPN device has 2 Ethernet ports: a Public Port & a Private Port. The Public Port is directly connected to the Internet via firewall and routers. The Private Port is connected to the 30 computers in the XYZ Pvt. Ltd. Now, as we can see, John wishes to connect to VPN; he, using the Internet, can connect to the VPN.

Now, one more thing, we can see, in the figure, over the ‘Internet‘, there is something called “SSL Tunnel Thru Internet“. Remember SSL? This is that tunnel. It is encrypted through several algorithms, which depends on the manufacturer of the device. Some manufacturers uses AES-128 some uses RC4 algorithm.

One more thing, the VPN device looks alike just a normal ’24-port switch‘. It contains more than 1 Ethernet port. It contains all normal hardware components of a CPU: like a Motherboard, a Processor, RAMs, a Hard Disk Drive etc. They also contain some Operating Systems. Generally Linux OS is provided with the devices. The reason is open source, free and its robustness. More over Linux is such a dynamic OS, that, the administrator can perform any type of job there.

So, in a nutshell, this was a brief architecture of VPN devices. If you guys face any problem, just post them in comments or contact us. We shall try to help you.

Thank you.