Introduction to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

When: 
Thursday, November 17, 2005 - 7:00pm
Lecturer(s): 
Edward Leonard, IBM

This presentation will discuss Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology. The presentation will cover the following areas: historical reasons for the emergence and popularity of VPNs, different types of VPN architectures including examples of each, how they evolved, where they are going, implementation issues, the benefits from using each and an explanation of why different companies choose some of the different VPN technologies. The basics of symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and how they relate to VPN tunnels, will also be introduced.

Lecturer Biography: 

Ed Leonard is a Senior Technical Consultant at the IBM Innovation Center (IIC) in Waltham. He manages the IIC's network including its VPN servers, firewall, and router and switch infrastructure. He has been with IBM for 25 years, the last 15 of which have been in the networking and systems management fields. He has spent time in the IBM Northeast Area Systems Center, IBM Global Services and the last 6 years in his current position in the IIC. In his current role, the network infrastructure he manages is used by IBM's Business Partners to enable their applications on IBM hardware and software technologies.