ELI5: What is a VPN concentrator?
If a VPN is a secret tunnel, a VPN concentrator is the big tunnel station where hundreds of tunnels all meet in one place. It is a dedicated machine built to handle lots of secure connections at the same time.
Definition
A VPN concentrator is a dedicated network device designed to terminate and manage large numbers of simultaneous VPN connections. Unlike a general-purpose router or firewall that may support VPN as one of many functions, a VPN concentrator is purpose-built for high-throughput VPN termination, providing centralized authentication, encryption, and access policy enforcement for remote users connecting to a corporate network.
Key Details
- Supports site-to-site and remote-access VPN termination at scale
- Performs encryption/decryption offloading, preserving performance on other network devices
- Integrates with RADIUS, LDAP, or Active Directory for user authentication
- Supports protocols including IPSec, SSL/TLS (SSL VPN), L2TP, and OpenVPN
- Always-on VPN solutions often use concentrators as the central termination point
Connections
- Parent: vpn — the VPN concentrator is the infrastructure component that enables scalable VPN deployments
- See also: always-on-vpn, ssltls-offloading