Editing Virtual private network (section)

== VPN general working ==
How a VPN works depends on which technologies and protocols the VPN is built upon. A [[tunneling protocol]] is used to transfer the network messages from one side to the other. The goal is to take network messages from applications on one side of the tunnel and replay them on the other side. Applications do not need to be modified to let their messages pass through the VPN, because the virtual network or link is made available to the OS.

Applications that do implement tunneling or [[Proxy pattern|proxying]] features for themselves without making such features available as a network interface, are not to be considered VPN implementations but may achieve the same or similar end-user goal of exchanging private contents with a remote network.