Most VPN offerings tend to involve hardware that must be attached to a network. Depending on the hardware, this can take a great deal of time and effort to install and troubleshoot. One company, however, decided there had to be a better way of doing things.

Founded in 1998, Imperito Networks (imperito.com) caters to both large and small businesses that want a VPN, and want it fast. Rather than installing and configuring hardware, their entire VPN, known as InstantVPN, is entirely software-based. This allows the VPN to be installed and configured very quickly. The software is subscription-based, and uses Imperito's data center as an operating base.

InstantVPN consists of three components. The first, the InstantVPN Manager, is a Web-based component for the network administrator. From the Manager, the administrator can control all aspects of the VPN, from adding new users and connections to monitoring the VPN gateways. Additionally, the InstantVPN Manager has dynamic billing logs, something very useful for Web hosts. This application can run on any computer using Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.

The second component is the gateway itself, known as the InstantVPN Gateway. This is a software application that transforms the pre-existing Internet gateway of the corporate network into a VPN gateway, complete with dynamic server configuration via the Internet and NETBIOS forwarding. Like the Manager, this application has very low systems requirements: any Windows 2000/NT Service Pack 5 server with a 400 MHZ CPU and 64 MB of RAM can run it.

The final component is the InstantVPN Client. This is a downloadable piece of software that connects to the rest of the VPN. With a dynamic Internet-based configuration, the software does not require the end user to be able to anything more than click on his/her selected VPN gateway and click on "Connect." The software does everything else automatically, fully supporting all IP protocols and using the computer's own hardware. The only requirements for the client are a Pentium II, 32 MB of RAM, an Internet connection, and Windows 98 SE or later.