“Virtual private networks (VPNs) are a means for connecting to a
remote network and making it look like a local one. This means you
can connect to your work location and have full access to resources
(if so configured on the work side), such as shared printers, work
files, etc.“There are a number of VPN products freely available; some are
kernel-level like openswan and can be fairly difficult to
configure. OpenVPN, available at http://openvpn.net/, doesn’t
require patching the kernel and can be extremely straightforward.
Configuration is more difficult if you want to use a lot of its
features, but for a quick client/server VPN, you can be up and
running in minutes…”