Talk:Virtual private network

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Edits[edit]

I've simplified the beginning as a start to your marathon editing here. I think the following sections (the technical sections) need a lot of work and it's a bit beyond me. It's far too techie. Much of it seems to be written either by a Cisco employee or someone who's swallowed the Cisco bible. I hope I've helped and haven't made things worse but I do think a simple plain English start will help. If I've oversimplified I apologise but you shouldn't need a Phd to understand this and we also need to know about how we got here and how the market is developing (not just the nitty gritty tech). I also think that having China called out for anti VPN stance looks really biased - need to give a rounder picture of regimes that object to VPN use...SandrinaHatman (talk) 19:12, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your edit to the opening of the article, in my opinion, paints an incorrect picture of what a VPN is. A VPN is *private* because it encapsulates *private network* traffic, not because it is inherently private. As such it is my intention to rewrite (at least) the opening of the article to better reflect the actual and intended purpose of the technology. As the intro currently stands, it provides a vague description of the technology that lends credence to the unfortunate misuse of the term in marketing circles. This is dangerous, misleading, and it should be considered wikipedia's responsibility to better inform readers. HighPriestDuncan (talk) 20:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if my first reply seemed cranky. On one hand it is important to have a generally understandable opening; however, on the other hand one must consider that it is simply impossible to easily describe networking technology without relying on existing terms and concepts. I've re-written the introduction to more precisely describe (in technical terms) what a VPN actually does, and have included a small bit that I may expand about the common (incorrect) use of the term. While I recognize that we must accomodate individuals trying to determine what a "VPN" is (when they really want Proxy server, or maybe Anonymous proxy), it is important to recognize that everyone uses wikipedia - technical and non-technical. I think that a good compromise would be to include an accessible description of the term use and its nature, while retaining the technical nature of the article - after all, we cannot simply ignore the actual technology. Having read over many of the discussions on this page (which really ought to be archived) it is my belief that many people come here under the wrong pretense. Having been exposed to material promoting "VPN" services, they intend to do more research to determine if that thing is relevant and useful to them. Unfortunately, because many rather disgusting organizations have executed a most succesful campaign to hijack the term, they are instead presented with an article detailing a complicated technological concept using appropriately technical terms. With that having been said, I do not believe that WP:COMMONTITLE warrants that this article become a description of such dubious services, but that it remains an article strictly about the technology itself, touching on such services where relevant. HighPriestDuncan (talk) 00:04, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this badly needs major improvement. I couldn't understand "it encapsulates *private network* traffic" nor "tunneling protocols over existing networks". And I gave up altogether on reaching "Typically, individuals interact with remote access VPNs". Deipnosophista (talk) 11:20, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly as HighPriestDuncan said, I came to the article to help decide if I should subscribe to a VPN. I am an educated (MS degree) writer, but I don't understand the jargon-filled article at all. Mr.Slade (talk) 22:23, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article seems to be written for those with sufficient knowledge not to need the article in the first place. Mr.Slade (talk) 22:42, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many of our technical articles have this problem. I have tagged the article for improvement. ~Kvng (talk) 12:56, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

VPN History and Origins and considerations[edit]

We need a section on the origins and history of VPNs including when it became available for consumer/home use. Plus we need to know the limitations. The wiki page is not only incomplete but too technical. In its present form it's geared mostly toward computer scientists and IT Professionals 2604:3D08:4E7C:CC00:6DBB:478A:B422:58CC (talk) 08:13, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Does not explain how a VPN actually works[edit]

Lots of details, but nowhere in sight a description of how packets are actually routed in/between networks. 77.119.206.161 (talk) 17:23, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The self-congratulatory article also fails to explain how “VPNs” that are installed only on the user’s machine can possibly provide site-to-site encryption. There has to be software on both ends. If the “answer” is that you connect through some remote “relay server” that has a matching client preinstalled, then that’s pointless, as your data exists in clear text at a point OTHER THAN your machine and the intended fecipient’s. Alas, yet another junior guru posts a buzzword-filled article that glosses over and/or altogether omits critical points, thereby demonstrating only the superficiality of his understanding. 2601:14B:4181:BF30:B58C:A6E9:E32D:DAE5 (talk) 20:55, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Review for Wikipedia:GLAM/PoliMi/2024[edit]

This is a review I am attaching to discuss the article in the context of the PhD course "Science, technology, society and Wikipedia 2024".

The article is well-structured, I just corrected few misspells at the beginning. The article provides detailed technical explanations, but may be too complex for non-experts (as myself). It has extensive detail on VPN types, protocols, and security measures, but the content is highly technical, which could be challenging for general readers. In any case it is definitely very on the topic, maybe the only suggestion that I could give to improve it is to add proper citations to some sections. --FedeJ12 (talk) 13:06, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for reviewing. I agree this topic is often useful to non-technical people and that is the reason for my rework. Before my edits the technical stuff was much bigger and hard to read even for technicians because of multiple repetitions and bad coherence between different sections. I would still improve in this direction over time, and I hope the new shape of the article will make it easier for other people to contribute. As you see in previous discussions there were people in the past who couldn't start touching it because of its previous messy state. I hope my edits will be the starting point for the better. LuKePicci (talk) 14:51, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Review for Wikipedia:GLAM/PoliMi/2024[edit]

This is a review to discuss the article in the context of the PhD course "Science, technology, society and Wikipedia 2024".

The article gives a very detailed explanation of the working principles of VPN, which is an improvement from the previous article. However, I must agree with the previous reviewer in the fact that it may be to complex for people to understand. Nontheless, nice work!

I just corrected some very minor writing and spelling mistakes. Alexandrinovic (talk) 13:51, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for edits and corrections. Yeah, some aspects are complex to read for most non-technical people. That's why my edits mainly focused on adding some general contents for everyday VPN users, and then also fix the technical stuff in order to better match the general descriptions of the top sections. My idea is that the article like this, which are definitely prone to technicalities, should provide readable and accessible knowledge for non-technicians and then give extra details with increasing degree of complexity. In its previous shape, the technical stuff was overwhelming and also not correctly related between the various sections. Moving out that ton of explanations about PPVPN is indeed the first edit I made. LuKePicci (talk) 14:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Review for Wikipedia:GLAM/PoliMi/2024[edit]

Nice page rework; now it is more readable and has fewer technical details. These are the comments and the revisions I have:

I would review the title of some sections to be more concise
I have added some references where possible; generally, the article lacks references. I would suggest to add more references, at least once for each paragraph, even if they are repeated
The image about tree classification is too small; it could be zoomed in or either removed
I suggests adding an external links section

--Gianaccordi (talk) 14:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for proposing improvement points. Unfortunately the small image was there before my edits but it could be replaced by other media that is already on commons.

It was easy to provide references for the parts I added from scratch, but I think the paragraphs that still lacks one may reuse some of the existing ones as you suggested. LuKePicci (talk) 15:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]