VPN - Virtual Private Networking

A VPN is a secure, private communication tunnel between two or more devices across a public network (like the Internet). These VPN devices can be either a computer running VPN software or a special device like a VPN enabled router. It allows your home computer to be connected to your office network or can allow two home computers in different locations to connect to each over the Internet.

Even though a VPN's data travels across a public network like the Internet, it is secure because of very strong encryption. If anyone 'listens' to the VPN communications, they will not understand it because all the data is encrypted. In addition, VPN's monitor their traffic in very sophisticated ways that ensure packets never get altered while traveling across the public network. Encryption and data verification is very CPU intensive.