We live in an age where VPNs are available at our fingertips – we are highly privileged! However, fantastic services such as HelloVPN have an intriguing history behind them. When were VPNs first used, and what were they used for? Let’s take a trip in time and see how far we’ve come.
Index
1-Which Country Invented VPN?
2-When Was VPN First Used?
3-What Was the Earliest VPN Technology?
4-What Are the Five Types of VPN?
Which Country Invented VPN?
The history of the VPN is a little complex – but it has roots in the USA. That’s because the initial VPN technology was designed and implemented by Microsoft!
Believe it or not, Microsoft was an early pioneer of VPN technology, though it would initially be used for business purposes. Leading VPN services such as HelloVPN would arrive some years later as data privacy grew to be a significant issue.
It’s reported that Gurdeep Singh-Pall may have been the ‘inventor of VPN’ – this seems to be the agreement!
When Was VPN First Used?
VPN as technology was first used around 1996, again, by Microsoft. However, it wasn’t until the early 00s that its use became more widespread. That’s when the internet started growing exponentially and when more and more people started to worry about data.
However, there’s no exact date before this when VPN may have been ‘created’. As such, we can essentially pinpoint the mid-90s as the leaping-off point for the technology. It wasn’t until 1999 that the first-ever specification was made public.
VPNs are used to help businesses keep data private in-house and cross-office. Therefore, sensitive information and corporate data were effectively locked away with ease.
What Was the Earliest VPN Technology?
The earliest VPN technology used in the mid-90s revolved around the simple Peer to Peer Tunneling Protocol. This was otherwise known as PPTP, and it’s still in wide use to this day.
PPTP is the most basic form or type of VPN available. It operates purely through the use of a username and a password. It also only uses two specific types of data tunnelling. PPTP effectively creates a secure, private network between two or more users on WAN or LAN.
PPTP helped to establish the very basics of VPN. Crucially, this style of VPN was a three-step system that created the foundations of the technology.
What Are the Five Types of VPN?
VPNs can be divided into several categories. However, many refer to ‘five main types’. These are protocols – and they decide how data travels through VPNs.
The first of these types is, of course, PPTP. PPTP is the most basic of all the protocols, and it also tends to be one of the fastest. However, it is no longer considered the most secure.
Beyond this, OpenVPN is a protocol that provides developers with greater access to code under the hood. It benefits from the best encryption and some of the most flexibility – but it can be slow to run.
L2TP/IPSec, meanwhile, is fast and popular. However, it often requires a lot of tweaking – though it’s highly encrypted when put to use in the right way. IKEv2, on the other hand, is built to provide open source security on a mobile standard. It’s speedy, too, blending the best of all worlds.
The last of the main types is SSTP or Secure Socket Tunnelling Protocol. This solidly secure protocol is hard to defeat, but it’s largely exclusive to Microsoft.
Conclusion
VPNs have come a long distance in the past 25 to 30 years. They will likely keep evolving and developing from here, too! Now’s the time to invest in HelloVPN’s speedy, secure and powerful protection – and to take your data seriously.