What the heck is a tunnel? OK, then, what is a VPN?

Modulate Demodulate - The ModemCast

How hard is it to describe the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a completely non-technical person? Come to find out, it is fairly difficult! Chris Young - one of our esteemed co-hosts - tweeted out a seemingly simple question: “Explain the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a non/technical audience.”. Proposed answers were given, a variety of interpretations of "non-technical audience" were made. Hilarity ensued. which really begs the questions: what the heck ARE tunnels? What are VPNs? Think you know? So did we. Take a trip with us through our winding exploration as we dive into the abyss of the ocean of possibilities - all aboard the RV Calypso of encapsulation.

List of Tunneling mechanisms:

Encapsulation

• VXLAN
• GENEVE
• GRE
• mGRE
• NVGRE
• OTV
• IP in IP
• 6 in 4
• 4 in 6
• EoIP
• PPTP
• CAPWAP DTLS
• GTP (GPRS Tunnelling Protocol)
• Q-in-Q
• IPSec
• L2TP
• HTTPS Tunnelling
• DNS Tunnelling
• SSH Tunnelling
• TOR
• L2F
• ISATAP
• Teredo
• Wireguard
• MACSEC

Control Plane

• EVPN
• L2VPNs
• L3VPNs
• MVPN

Label Stacks

• LDP
• VPLS
• RSVP-TE
• SR (V6/MPLS)
• 128T (NDN-esque)
• DOVE

All in One

• ZeroTier
• Wireguard