
VPNs (usually) use encryption so that intermediate systems between you and the company (such as your ISP or a malicious wireless network sniffer) cannot eavesdrop your traffic. When you are logged on to a company's VPN, the effect is similar as though you took your computer to the company's building and directly connected it. What a VPN does logically is turn your internet connection into a big Ethernet cable. (There are special-case exceptions to this but most of the time this is the case).Ī single proxy server can service hundreds or thousands of users. To handle multiple users you need to set up multiple VPNs.

In general a VPN can only support a connection between one computer or network and the remote network. Specific software support at the user's end to make the requests to the proxy server. Proxy servers are cheaper and often easier to set up for mass users, but they require VPNs are more difficult to set up but any software can use the internet can use a VPN. That's all very well, but what's the difference? Requests for internet resources (or resources on the remote network) travel down the virtual connection and through the remote network to the internet as if it were the computer's internet connection. Your computer is then a part of the remote network. This is effectively the same as running a cable from the remote network to your computer, but a lot cheaper. You connect your computer (or network) to a remote network through a virtual network connection. VPNĪ virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure such as the Internet to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization's network. The proxy server then goes and gets the resource, and then passes it back to you. Your computer would connect to the proxy server and make a request for a resource (say a web page).

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. The two are very different concepts: Proxy Server
