Comment by mindslight
3 years ago
> A point-to-point line to the provider's router that then bridges you onto the public internet is a "private network" only in the most degenerate sense.
You can make an analogous argument about the traditional corporate site to site VPN, which is a point to point link between routers that bridges two non-virtual networks. By your standard, calling that a virtual network is only true in the degenerate sense.
I see your point about the possible meaning of "private", but I don't think that quibbling over the semantics is useful for much besides gatekeeping. There were plenty of corporate VPN links piping Internet-reachable IP addresses, just as there were plenty of VPN links with broken or nonexistent crypto.
> You can make an analogous argument about the traditional corporate site to site VPN, which is a point to point link between routers that bridges two non-virtual networks. By your standard, calling that a virtual network is only true in the degenerate sense.
Disagree. "The network", in the sense that my PC, and Bob's PC in the next town, and the server in our colo space, are all on "the network", is virtual, in a pretty essential sense. Even if 68 of the links in the network are physical wires and only 2 of them are virtual, their existence changes the character of the whole. In the same way that we have an "international network", that would be important to think of and treat as international, even though it only has one cross-border cable.
What is the point of just quibbling over definitions? If you were using this framing as in support of a larger idea, it would be plausible to entertain. But without that I don't really see much point, because it's just as easy to declare things the opposite of your assertion - eg the term "VPN" doesn't apply to an entire corporate network (as it would per your extension argument), rather just the virtual link part of it. Of course asserting this is similarly pointless without some larger point.