B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

308 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
10.7.6. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
Many organizations have several offices situated in diverse locations.
They have employees who are traveling or telecommuting, as well as
business partners and customers in remote locations. These organizations
would like to provide all these entities access to their internal LANs.
The simplest way of doing this would be to dial-in directly to the
modems of the organization or access its Remote Access Server (RAS)
directly, via long distance telephone calls.
This method is secure. However, it is substantially expensive for
most companies. The ideal way would be a secure way of getting
access to the LAN through the general Internet. Internet-based VPNs
that use the open, distributed infrastructure of the Internet to transmit
data between corporate sites, provide companies with a mechanism for
a combination of security and economy (see Figure 10.16).
Branch Office Branch Office
Partner Office
Figure 10.16. — VPN network securing a business, partner company and
mobile worker