VPN Guide

What is a VPN? – Full VPN Guide 2018

VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, have been around for a long time, but only gained widespread popularity in recent years. Previously, they were the domain of the very tech-savvy, but those days have long passed. Now, VPN services are very easy-to-use and readily available – there are over 300 well-established VPN service providers around today. These services provide consumers with privacy, anonymity, and security when using the Internet. Through encryption and other technology, they obscure a user’s IP address, secure their traffic, and allow for bypassing of geographic restrictions on content, among other benefits. In this guide, we’ll look at VPNs in more detail, and seek to answer the question, “What is a VPN?”

What is a VPN?

First, it’s important to understand the basics of VPNs. The meaning of VPN, Virtual Private Network, originally came from the fact that the technology was designed to create a virtual network, which was private, over the existing, public Internet. These were popular ways for employees to gain remote access to company servers, for example. You simply dialed in or navigated to a particular login interface, supplied your credentials, and gained tunneled access to the VPN (even though you were on a public or remote network). These days, that use has largely been supplanted, with VPNs more commonly thought of as third-party services for security and anonymity, as we’ll explain in more detail in the next section.

Some details about VPNs:

Almost all implementations of VPNs, by definition, use some kind of authentication and encryption to regulate users and traffic.
The VPN model can be characterized by three main factors – authentication, confidentiality, and integrity.
Original VPNs were basically point-to-point only – a user would dial in or access a network, and communication flow was limited linearly. Newer implementations seek to overcome this problem and function more like a traditional LAN connection.
The global market for VPNs is expected to top 100 billion USD by 2022.

How Do VPNs Work?

VPNs may seem complicated, but they work in a fairly straightforward manner. After choosing a service provider, and subscribing (there is usually a fee, though some offer free services), the user downloads a client or application, inputs their credentials, and sets up a VPN connection. What is a VPN connection? Simply, this is a network connection between the user’s computer and a server on the VPN’s network. This is accomplished through a method known as tunneling, which is a good descriptor to visualize what happens – essentially, a tunnel is opened for traffic between your computer and the service provider’s server. Here’s a step-by-step explanation of what happens after the user activates the VPN connection.

On the user’s end, outbound traffic is encrypted, rendering it incomprehensible if intercepted.
The traffic is sent via the tunnel connection to the VPN server to which the user is connected.
The VPN server decrypts the traffic and figures out what the outbound destination is.
The VPN server uses its pool of IP addresses as the origin point for the traffic, protecting the user’s true IP (which only the user and the VPN server know, connected via the tunnel).
The data travels to the destination server.
If there’s a response, it goes back to the VPN server.
The VPN server encrypts the response and sends it back through the tunnel to the user.
The user’s system decrypts the data and processes the response.

Of course, there are a lot more technical aspects to it than that, but that is the basic gist of how VPN services work. They also allow for bypassing restrictions that are based on geography, as those utilize IP address geolocation – comparing an IP address against a database to localize where the user is coming from. With VPN services, the IP address it analyzes is from the VPN server – so, by connecting to servers in other countries on the VPN network, the IP address’s geolocation can be quite different from the actual location of the user. This is why many VPN services have servers in dozens of countries.

What are the Uses of VPNs?

So, exactly what are VPNs used for? There are a great many things that you can do with VPNs, based around the benefits inherent in their function. Some of the most common uses of VPN services include:

Unblocking geo-restricted content: as discussed above. This bypasses state and regional censorship, as well as gets around some regional copyright and distribution restrictions.
Video streaming without throttling: many ISPs throttle video streaming services, since they use a disproportionately high amount of network bandwidth. With a VPN, ISPs cannot determine what kind of traffic is being passed back and forth, and therefore cannot identify it as streaming and throttle it.
Anonymity is another reason to use a VPN: Obscuring your real IP address to websites or services you visit is much like having an unlisted or blocked phone number – it helps keep you safe by avoiding leaving traces or digital fingerprints everywhere you visit, or advertising your digital address to the world.
Bypassing censorship is one of the big appeals of VPN services: In many countries (China being one of the best-known examples), the Internet is not free, and the government blacklists sites or services for any number of reasons. With a VPN service, people can get free, unfiltered, unrestricted access to the news, information, and services that are available on the internet.
Business travelers tend to use VPNs for similar reasons: Between restrictions on Internet use and site access, as well as worries over the government or ISP espionage, many companies have their business travelers use VPN services when abroad.
Peer-to-peer file sharing: such as using the BitTorrent protocol (torrenting), is made much more secure and safe by using a VPN, in two ways. First, peers do not see your real IP address, so you’re safer from hacking or bad actors. Second, because traffic is encrypted, your real address is hidden, and most (good) VPNs don’t maintain logs, there’s no way for litigious copyright holders to go after your VPN, ISP, or you.

How Secure is a VPN?

Just how secure is a VPN service? There are several factors that go into answering this question. At the most basic level, VPNs that use industry-standard AES-256 bit encryption are very secure – it’s the same level of encryption that militaries and intelligence agencies use, and would take more time than the life of the universe thus far to brute-force crack. The tunneling protocols are also relevant to security, with OpenVPN being the most common, but various other types being available from most providers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Other protocols include IPSec, IKEv2, SSTP, PPTP, and similar. For most consumers, the basic OpenVPN is more than sufficient for creating a secure tunnel.

At the same time, the security of a VPN can depend on their jurisdiction, and their logging and privacy policies. VPNs based in intelligence-friendly countries, such as the US, Five Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes alliances, are often seen as less secure and truly private than those based in off-shore or more permissive jurisdictions. Likewise, the best VPNs have strict no-logging policies, meaning they retain no data that links customers or IP addresses to traffic on their service.

So, VPNs Make Me Totally Safe and Anonymous Online?

While nothing can make you 100% anonymous or totally safe, VPNs go a long way towards bridging the gap between the vulnerabilities of browsing or using Internet services unprotected and being totally secure. With good encryption, a reliable VPN with a no-logging policy, kill switch, and other features, you are about as safe online as you can be in terms of obscuring your true IP address and having your traffic encrypted. However, this does nothing to stop you from getting viruses, visiting dodgy sites, unwillingly giving up personal information, etc. You still need to be smart about what you do online, and how you do it.

How Legal are VPNs?

VPNs are fully legal in almost every country in the world. As they have mostly legal uses and purposes, there is no rationale on which they could be restricted. Authoritarian regimes, of course, may restrict or ban their use, but in practical terms, even in those countries, it’s not really possible to entirely stamp them out. As of this writing, there are two types of restrictions on VPNs – countries that only allow government-approved VPNs, and countries that have banned them outright.

Government-Approved VPNs Only

China
Iran
Oman
Russia
Turkey
UAE

VPNs Banned

Belarus
Iraq
North Korea
Turkmenistan

Otherwise, they are perfectly legal to use (for legal purposes, of course).

Are VPNs Hard to Use?

VPNs used to be quite difficult to use, but that has changed a lot in recent years. Now, they are incredibly easy to use, even for those who aren’t very tech-savvy. In most cases, signing up and paying for a subscription is comparable to most other online service websites. Downloading and installing the program or app is usually a matter of just a few clicks. And then using the client or app is usually as easy as inputting your username and password, and clicking connect. Most have very easy-to-use software clients or applications, designed to be approachable for people of all tech expertise levels. Additional features, such as changing to another server or another country, or more advanced options, are usually pretty easy to use as well.

The top VPN providers of today proffer simple and straightforward software, reasonably-priced subscriptions, and reliable service, to allow consumers to browse and use the Internet safely, securely, anonymously, and privately.