VPN Architecture Enabling Users to be Associated with Multiple VPNs

Recent improvements in network technology enable network communications in various social organizations and enable various social organizations to be virtualized in networks. We named the mass of virtual organizations “cybersociety”. A “person” in cyber-society needs to establish secure communication associations with multiple virtual organizations. Therefore, we believe that VPN service can help to realize cyber-society because of its security. In this paper, we propose a VPN architecture where a single host can be simultaneously associated with multiple VPNs corresponding to virtual organizations. Because our architecture enables VPN service to be used on a by-host basis, it is more flexible than PPVPN (Provider Provisioned VPN) architecture, which is designed on a customer site basis. Additionally, when compared to an extranet architecture, our architecture has superior forwarding performance because it enables users to directly access destination VPNs.