I note that neither of the previous responses actually say what a VPN is.

It stands for Virtual Private Network.

The idea is that, from inside your own little Local Area Network - the collection of bits and pieces that sit on your side of your connection to the Big Bad Internet (your router), you have an encrypted link to another server somewhere else, possibly even in another country.

Having this link, it looks like you are connected directly to that server and can then browse the Internet while looking as if you are where the server is, instead of where you are. One obvious benefit of doing this is that it enables one to get around restrictions on things that, for example, are forbidden in your local jurisdiction, since the accesses seem to come from wherever the server is based.

Of course, that is one view of VPNs. In business, it is common for a salesperson, for example, to use a VPN to connect their laptop from wherever they are back to the main office and connect as though they are local. This gives them access to everything they would normally use like email, printing and file services.

Having said that, I have never actually used a VPN myself, as the setup procedures seem to be "understood", ie vague to the point of uselessness, as if everybody already knows how to set one up. Nope. But then, I have never had the need to use one.

Penny

My first encounter with the term was in about 1996. I was attending an information session at my employer given by Cisco about their then new Fast Ethernet switches. The Cisco rep mentioned that the switch could be set up to provide a VPN between switch ports. I couldn't then, and still can't, visualize why you would want a VPN on a company's internal wired network. However, over the Internet, they can provide real value. I have worked at two different large companies which provided access to the internal network for remote employees over a third-party VPN, usually utilizing two factor authentication.