This is a guest post authored by Monte Russel.

VPN (Virtual Personal Network) is very convent way to connect while you are away from your normal network. This is a network protocol that builds a private path or tunnel from your computer to the network you want to connect to. A lot of companies utilize this protocol for their employees to connect to the business network while traveling or working from home.

As with all network devices, once you leave the safety of the local area network (LAN) and connect to the Wide Area Network (WAN) or World Wide Web (WWW) your protocol is subject to attack by the unscrupulous that inhabit the WWW. Hackers, thieves, and criminals have tools to defeat a normal VPN’s security. To be safest, you or your company should invest in a commercial VPN package.

A commercial package will have encryption as part of the VPN. With the encryption you will have two keys, a private key and a public key. Only you know the password to the private key and only the company knows the public key. For a hacker to gain access to the encrypted data you are sending back and forth on the VPN they have to crack both keys the public and the private key. By the time they have cracked the key you will have ended your session and move away from their locality. That is unless you establish your VPN and leave it on for a long period of time, a very long time. At this time the best programs that can recover passwords take anywhere from two days to a week to get the password to a 16 bit encrypted key. Newer programs use 58 bit or 64 bit encryption keys.

So now you want to know if your VPN is encrypted? Well one way to know is ask your IT department. Another is when you installed your VPN did you have a ‘Certificate’ that you had to install and then create a password? If you have a certificate and had to create a password then type random characters on the key board to create the key you have encryption.

If you don’t have encryption I suggest you contact your IT Director or Manager and find out why your VPN is open to anyone who wants to connect while you are connected. An open VPN is an invitation not only to the data you are transferring back and forth but to the sending and receiving computers. It is like an open door on a hot summer day, any thing can and will come in to the house.

To read more about the VPN Protocol see this RFC:
Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol
http://www.diy-computer-repair.com/vpn.html

About The Author: Monte Russell is a certified Systems Engineer with a degree in Computer Electronics Technology, MCSE, CNA, A+, and many commercial hardware certificates. His web site www.diy-computer-repair.com offers insight in to self computer repair. His free monthly newsletter is always intriguing and full of insights about computing. Subscribe for free at http://www.diy-computer-repair.com/newsletter-signup.html

If you have ever noticed, almost all current network cards support 10/100/1000 ethernet, but very few routers actually support the /1000. The last /1000 is actually called gigabit networking, allowing you to transfer 1 gigabit per second – which is the same as 1000 megabits per second or 125 megabytes per second - over your network. This increase in speed is significant, especially if you need to transfer large files between computers on your network.

Gigabit routers are available, but they are usually pretty pricey. I have a solution that can work with your current setup for under $50. It can definitely be worth the extra money if you intend to do any file transfers. Time is money, you know. Here’s what I recommend:

• Check out your favorite computer warehouse – I will use Newegg for sample prices – to find a simple gigabit switch that has 4 ports or more.
• Dlink and Linksys both have switches available for under $35 at Newegg which can be used for this purpose
• When you get the switch, you will want to shut off your router and modem
• Unplug all the ethernet cables on your router except the one that goes to your modem
• Plug the switch into the router with an Ethernet cable
• Plug all computers and other networked devices directly into the switch

Using this process allows all the computers on your home network (assuming they are all wired into this switch) to communicate at gigabit speeds, without investing in a gigabit router.
In my house, I have Ethernet wired in the walls to a few different locations. All the drops lead to the furnace room where they are mounted in the wall. I have it set up so that there is a gigabit switch in the furnace room supplying signal to two of the locations, and the other lead goes to my room, where I have it go into another gigabit switch with my equipment plugged in there. Then, from there, that switch goes into the router.

My overall network speed has seen a very noticeable increase since the switch to gigabit. For me, it was well worth my time. I hope it can be worth yours too!

The battle to protect your computer and network against treats is essentially never ending. While there are a lot of simple and effective things you can do, another trick to add to your arsenal is keeping tabs on your network and the connected devices. A simple (and free) utility to help you with this is RogueScanner.

RogueScanner scours your network for connected machines as well as devices connected to those machines. You can then view the findings of the scan to make sure what was detected is indeed what you have. If you find any differences, you might have something going on.

There is a RogueScanner tour available for you to view in order to get a better understanding of the process. This is worth looking into if you have an entire network to keep track of.