VNC, VPN, and All That Jazz

[Kurt Wall]

On Tuesday 15 February 2005 21:17, James McDonald enlightened us thusly:
> > 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)

Nice feature, that. pcAnywhere was great in it's day, but it's day was a 
*long* time ago. If I never have to use a 2400 baud modem again, I'll 
consider myself blessed.

> 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

True, but VNC still appears to be free. RealVNC seem to have 
reimplemented it for better performance, but I didn't read closely 
enough to sort that out.

> 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.

Not really. I'm just starting to research it. I knew the terms, but that 
was about it. 25-30 pages from now, my readers will think I'm an 
expert. :-)

> HTH

It does, indeed. Thanks, James.

Kurt