Concepts / Encryption and trust

Encryption and trust

Remote access vs site-to-site

Also called remote-access VPN, road warrior, VPN pool, site-to-site, SSL VPN, TLS VPN, OpenVPN, allowed IPs, cryptokey routing

A VPN joins one device to a network (remote access) or two networks through their gateways (site-to-site).

A remote-access client ("road warrior") runs the VPN itself and gets one address from the server's pool; the tunnel carries that device only. In site-to-site, two gateways hold one tunnel and route whole networks through it, so the devices behind them need nothing. WireGuard shows the difference in each peer's allowed IPs: a /32 from the pool, or a site's whole subnet (cryptokey routing: a packet is accepted only from the peer whose allowed IPs hold its source). IPsec dominates site-to-site, built into routers and firewalls; SSL/TLS VPNs carry the tunnel inside TLS, often on TCP 443, so remote users connect even from networks that let only web traffic out.

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