My previous assumption was a VPN that just pings and changes your IP location randomly. Maybe that’s right but I just downloaded Hamachi and it seems it is to connect networks? I’m trying to play Cry of Fear co-op so that’s why I got it, anyway. Is Hamachi a proper VPN? I’m just new to this level of technology as I never felt a VPN was necessary for my computer activities
There’s different types of VPN. There’s a corporate VPN such as Cisco AnyConnect, this is for business. Then there is “Anonymizers”, they change your IP address into something that can’t be traced back to you, such as Private Internet Access. Then there is literal “VPN’s”, which stands for “virtual private network”, done by software such as Hamachi, and it’s intended purpose is to create large LAN’s, so you and your friend can play Playstation together.
A VPN is in general an encrypted tunnel between two devices. Everything routed into it will fall out of the other end. With that your can create virtual private networks. That’s what VPN stands for.
Hamachi is a specialized VPN with the focus of LAN gaming where you are not in the same LAN. At least that’s what I was couple of years ago. So yeah it’s a proper VPN for what you are using it.
Whoever downvoted is an ass. Thats a good question and an even better answer by u/pern5150
Hamachi is cool and all, but I’ve known it to cause some really weird network issues on some machines
There’s no such thing as business VPNs or anonymizers or whatever the hell it is he was talking about. VPNs also are not required to be encrypted.
VPN is simply the establishment of two tunnel interfaces using the WAN interfaces as their source address for the initiation.
So if I’m at 172.200.1.1/31 and you’re at 192.200.1.1/31, we configure a tunnel that says, originate from 172.200.1.1/31 and set the destination to 192.200.1.1/31 with an IP address of 10.0.0.1 then you would do the opposite setting your tunnel source address to 192.200.1.31 and destination of 172.200.1.1/31 with an IP address of 10.0.0.2/24 depending on the tunneling protocol used, the negotiation takes place and then you can effectively talk to anything on the 10.0.0.0/24 network. That’s the basic concept. No corporate VPNs no anonymizers no encryption required (although you would rarely see that). Encryption is a technology that you run over your tunneling technologies. You do not need encryption for VPN and you don’t need a VPN to have an encrypted connection.
AnyConnect is exactly the same, conceptually, as whatever consumer market “anonymizer” VPN service you pay for. It’s a client to site VPN. You’re trying to access a remote server for the purposes of establishing a tunnel connection to that server.
When you initialize your Hamachi VPN, your tunnel address is that of the server you’re connecting into exactly as if you were using a " business VPN" The only difference, aside from the tunneling and encryption technologies used, would be the purpose of establishing the connection. One would be for changing your IP address for the purposes of obfuscating it, not gaining resources to company assets. In both instances, your IP address will change to whatever IP address is assigned for the tunnel scope, and in both instances you’ll be on someone else’s network with access to other network capabilities.
Also, it is in no way capable of hiding you from law enforcement unless you live in a country where the government won’t acquiesce to the country that’s looking to find you. You can always be tracked back from the company server that you initiate your original connection to.
There are obviously more elaborate designs and VPN technologies. Cisco’s DMVPN is an example of a site to site VPN, MPLS useless both layer two and layer three VPNs. You could even generalize the term even more and include VRF as a VPN technology although some will swear that it is while others will vehemently deny it.
Basically sums it up. Thanks a lot!
I agree that the top comment sort of brushes the surface and dumbs things down a bit, and I’m glad you’ve gone into such detail, but you can’t just say “there’s no such thing as corporate VPNs or anonymisers” because that now confuses the matter.
VPNs also don’t have to be specifically to create a virtual local area. That’s the whole premise that “anonymiser” services are built on. They act as a virtual gateway or proxy for your WAN traffic, leaving local routes local, and not creating routes to other users connected to the same server. And you’re right, it’s possible to trace back to you from one of these services, but the point is a lot of them exist in countries where the big guys, such as the Five Eyes have no jurisdiction. You have to trust what they say about not keeping any traceable logs, sure, but you can be pretty confident that you’re not going to get caught doing petty crimes, such as being racist on 4Chan or downloading movies using one of these services.
Also, Hamachi doesn’t route all your traffic via the tunnel. It will cleverly assign you a 10.x.x.x to the tunneling adaptor, and only connect to other clients who are on that same server. The rest of your traffic works as normal (I say this, but I have also seen Hamachi drop someone’s internet connection speeds from 1Gb/s to about 50Mb/s, no idea what the fuck happened there)
Then as for “corporate” stuff, sure, it’s not limited to business use, but it’s very rare that you see AnyConnect, Meraki, or SonicWall used outside of a business environment.