equinux VPN Tracker 5.4.4 - Manual (Page 5)

Welcome to VPN Tracker!
Thank you for your selection of the leading VPN
client for the Mac. If you are new to VPN, we
recommend you read this chapter to familiarize
yourself with the basic concepts of Virtual Private
Networks.
What is a VPN?
VPN is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Network. A VPN
connection is established between two peers (e.g. a Mac
running VPN Tracker and a VPN gateway). These peers
negotiate a so-called “Security Association” which is used to
encrypt and authenticate the data transferred between them.
This ensures that the data
‣ cannot be read by a 3rd party (confidentiality)
‣ cannot be changed by a 3rd party (integrity)
‣ is known to originate from the remote peer (authenticity)
What is a VPN Gateway?
The general term “gateway” describes a device which handles
external network traffic for a computer (or several computers
in a local network). Such devices are also called routers, and
many of them include security features (which turns them into
a ”firewall”). A gateway has at least two interfaces – a local or
private interface is used by the computers on its local area
network (LAN), and a public interface which is connected to
the Internet. Both interface can be wired (using Ethernet
cables) or wireless (using Airport/WLAN or 3G wireless
connections).
If a gateway is capable of handling a VPN connection, it is
called a VPN gateway. VPN gateways are usually specialized
hardware devices from vendors like Cisco, SonicWALL, or
Netgear. In some cases, VPN functionality is provided by some
software running on a standard computer (e.g. Astaro Internet
Security), which turns this computer into a VPN gateway.
In this guide, we will talk about VPN gateways, or simply VPN
devices.
What is VPN Tracker?
VPN Tracker is a versatile, user-friendly VPN client for Mac OS X.
Using a collection of industry-standard algorithms (the IPSec
standard, and some extensions), VPN Tracker can secure all
your internet-based communications, including those over
wireless networks.
VPN Tracker should work with all VPN gateways implementing
the above standard (IPSec) properly. Our predefined device
profiles for a large variety of VPN gateways make setting up
secure, encrypted tunnels to remote networks easier than ever
before!
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