I'm forwarding this for Paul, who's on vacation... FYI for anyone interested in something to give customers or management :) Blurb follows. Avi [snip] Here is a pointer to the completed white paper that Geoff Huston (Telstra Internet) and I have just completed: Title: What is a VPN? Abstract: The term "VPN," or Virtual Private Network, has become almost as recklessly used in the networking industry as has "QoS" (Quality of Service) to describe a broad set of problems and "solutions," when the objectives themselves have not been properly articulated. This confusion has resulted in a situation where the popular trade press, industry pundits, and vendors and consumers of networking technologies alike, generally use the term "VPN" as an offhand reference for a set of different technologies. This paper attempts to provide a common sense definition of a VPN, and an overview of different approaches to building them. The paper can be found under the subheading "Presentations, Slideware, and Assorted Cruft" at the URL: http://www.employees.org:80/~ferguson/ This paper is currently only available in a PostScript (.ps) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats. The paper (filenames: vpn.zip & vpn.pdf) is also available via anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp.employees.org/ferguson/<filename> It should be noted that this is not a positioning paper, but rather, an attempt to provide some sanity in the effort to define what constitutes a virtual private network. Please direct any comments, concerns, kudos, etc. to either Geoff or myself directly. Cheers, - paul (on vacation) [snip] -- Paul Ferguson || || Consulting Engineering || || Herndon, Virginia USA |||| |||| tel: +1.703.397.5938 ..:||||||:..:||||||:.. mailto:ferguson@cisco.com c i s c o S y s t e m s