Abstract

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) use the Internet or other network service as a backbone to provide a secure connection across a potentially hostile WAN. Such security guarantees provide the motivation for VPN deployment. This security does, however, come at a performance cost brought about by the increased processing overhead. This paper presents an investigation into these overheads. In particular, this investigation will consider the server side overhead for VPN deployments and seek to establish a relationship between this overhead and the number of clients being serviced.