VNC, VPN, and All That Jazz

[James McDonald]

> Today's silly question:
> 
> What is the difference between VNC and VPN? Or, are they related?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Kurt

VNC as I understand it stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is used for remote control of computers in the same manner as pcAnywhere. However (and here is where it's great) it's cross platform software and you can use the Linux vncviewer to connect to WinXX and vice versa. It can be installed as a service and you can connect to it using the provided vncviewer (tcp/590x) or through a browser using a java app that vnc serves on a differrent port (tcp/580x where on linux x is the screen number)

VNC can use encryption between the client and the host but it's not really related to VPN. I use VNC over SSH to securely connect remote clients to a VNC Host.

Until recently all versions of vnc where free but now the main provider(realvnc.com) has gone commercial

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network which means connecting two hosts or networks over an encrypted channel that will allow different sorts of traffic to traverse securely between the hosts or nets. IPSec,PPTP,SSH Tunneling,FreeSWAN are examples of VPN Implementation.

I'm sure you probably know all this intellectually already. 
HTH