What Is VPN?

Overview

Virtual Private Network (VPN) establishes secure, reliable, and cost-effective encrypted connections between your on-premises network or data center and a virtual network on the cloud.

VPN supports only non-cross-border connections.

S2C VPN involves three key components: VPN gateway, customer gateway, and VPN connection.

• A VPN gateway provides an Internet egress for a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to connect to a customer gateway in your on-premises data center.
• A VPN connection connects a VPN gateway to a customer gateway through encrypted tunnels, enabling communication between a VPC and your on-premises data center. This helps quickly establish a secure hybrid cloud environment.

Figure 1 shows the VPN networking.

Figure 1 VPN networking

Components

• VPN gateway: a virtual gateway of VPN on the cloud. It establishes secure private connections with a customer gateway in your on-premises network or data center.
• Customer gateway: a resource that provides information to the cloud about your customer gateway device. It can be a physical device or software application in your on-premises data center.
• VPN connection: a secure channel between a VPN gateway and a customer gateway. VPN connections use the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and IPsec protocols to encrypt the transmitted data.