Application of Virtual Private Network (VPN) in the Electricity Industry; Case Study Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO).
Chapter One
Aim and Objective
The aim of this research is to study the application of Virtual Private Network (VPN) in electricity industry and to analyze the concept of the Virtual Private Network in detail and check if this technology matches the requirements of the Kano Electricity Distribution Company.
The objectives as set out to achieve this aim are:
- Making a research study at KEDCO
- Providing a secure network access
- To increase accuracy in revenue generation
- Making an online research about VPN
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Virtual Private Network (VPN) & Kano Electricity Distribution Company (Kedco)
Previous chapter provided a short introduction to the area of VPN technology and the structure of the report in which the research will be carried out. It also outlined the aims and objectives of the study and a brief overview of the chapters included. Following the structure of the report, this chapter will provide a detailed study on the Virtual Private Network (VPN) Technology. The purpose of this part of the chapter is to analyze the VPN by focusing on some of its key areas.
The Emergence of VPN
Murhammer et al. (1998) discusses that the Internet started growing extensively to become a popular networking infrasturucture for communications. Companies began to consider the medium of the Internet to exploit their business needs.
The concept of Virtual Private Networking (VPN) was in its developing stages since 1980’s. The telecommunication companies were the once who brought up this idea of voice VPN’s in use, which provided business voice services. The purpose of the development of VPN was in relation to telecommunication but with the increasing use of networking and the booming era of the Internet the definitions of the VPN had to be changed with the changing needs of the businesses. The roles of the Information Technology (IT) and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were in stroke with the advent of the information sharing technologies like Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN).
A Virtual Private Network is a kind of infrastructure which is a network within a network. The VPN technology promises the Internet world to simplify complex and expensive task of giving remote access to commercial networks and connecting geographically distributed locations economically. Today’s VPN is a secured network connection which facilitates a private communication over an unsecured network called the Internet. It is said to be virtual because it has no real physical presence of the connection it just consists of packets routed over the Internet. VPN has made a major impact in the networking markets due to the list of benefits it provides over other networking products in the market. There are lists of VPN products available as per the needs and the requirements of the industries (Microsoft, 2005).
What Is VPN?
Mason (2004) states as “Cisco defines a VPN as an encrypted connection between a private network over a public network, such as an Internet. The V and N stands for virtual network. The P stands for private. To remain private the traffic is encrypted to keep the data confidential. Therefore a VPN is a private Virtual Network”.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter is going to cover all the possible research methodologies which can enable the study in the best possible approach. The purpose of the research is to analyse the VPN technology and the benefits it can provides to the electricity industry (kedco). The intension is to analyse the primary data and practical ongoing trends of the VPN from the secondary data and affect the end users of this technology.
According to Zikmund, “Research that intend to expand boundaries of knowledge itself on to verify the acceptability of a given theory”, is mentioned in Saunders (2003).
The above author suggest that analysing the data and having a basic knowledge base of the research is necessary which I believe can be achieved by systematic approach.
A systematic approach to the research will lead in appropriate results finding. As clearly stated by Saunders (2003) “Research has the following characteristics:
- Data are collected systematically
- Data are interpreted systematically
- There is clear purpose to find things”.
I have adapted the ‘Research Process model’ described by Saunders to some of the planning for conducting my research on ‘How VPN might benefit electricity industry.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
This chapter documents the primary research undertaken on this project and provides information collected from the questionnaire and interview. A detailed analysis is done in the chapter. The analysis consists of knowledge gained from the literature review and the data collected using the various research methods
CHAPTER FIVE
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Critical Evaluation
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss about how the research project was carried out. The chapter provides a critical evaluation of the researcher’s overall aspects and experience while carrying out the project. This chapter gives a brief write-up about the practical project considerations (that is the limitations of the project), personal issues faced, and the future work related to the area of research.
The researcher was very keen and ambitious over the project from the outset. It was highly difficult for the researcher to gain knowledge about the VPN technology because of its complexity. Also relating and bridging the needs of Kano Electricity Distribution Company in the field of network and communication with VPN as a solution were looked upon. The original data from Kano Electricity Distribution Company was incorporated into the study.
Research Approach
The research Approach used was a combination of Inductive and Deductive Approach. Initially a deductive approach was inherited by the researcher which was enabled to create a theory on VPN, with the use of various resources available. The researcher made use of both academic text from the library as well as electronic texts available over the Internet. This aspect of the gaining information was a success as the researcher was able to collect healthy information over the VPN and Kano Electricity Distribution Company. A huge problem was faced during the filtrating the useful and relevant information which was very time consuming in nature. The filtered resources which are used as a part of information have been listed below using the ‘Harvard Referencing System’ in the section References and Bibliography.
The aim was to find if the VPN technology suits Kano Electricity Distribution Company requirements of communication and hence an inductive approach was used after developing a theory of the area of research. The theory had to be tested so the researcher aimed to gain original and practical information from Kano Electricity Distribution Company. An online questionnaire was designed to gain the technologies which are used by Kano Electricity Distribution Company. Part A of the questionnaire was particularly aimed to gain information on Kano Electricity Distribution Company network while Part B focused on electricity industries which used VPN for their communication. The researcher tried to send the questionnaire to the electricity industries which were accessible over the Internet and the researcher faced a problem of non-response which extremely disappointed the researcher. The researcher did not lose hope and tried to find some other ways.
The researcher also implemented use of interview to gain additional information over the VPN use in Kano Electricity Distribution Company and conducted interview sessions with technical employee and manager of company which implemented VPN. The researcher believes as interview to also be a success as it took lot of efforts to get an appointment for the interview.
The whole analysis of the project is based on the theory from the resources, the survey results and the interview review.
What Could Have Been Achieved With More Time?
Granted more time for the research, the researcher would like to do a brief study on the recommendations of alternatives to the VPN technology like using open source software same as that of VPN’s or other communication technologies which provide the same benefits.
A follow up research would also cover a comparison of various technologies similar to VPN, and the benefits it can provide to Kano Electricity Distribution Company. The area of research was very specific in nature with regards to VPN which bounded the researcher to try and include this study. Also it would be unwise with regards to time and space allocated for the report.
Project Deliverables
The project deliverables suggested the application of VPN and how it might benefit Kano Electricity Distribution Company are outlined in the report with detailed specification on each area.
Usefulness of research
The researcher feels that the topic of research was very new and unusual for investigation. The researcher was unable to find any research based on the relative topic of VPN and Kano Electricity Distribution Company. The VPN technology is been used worldwide as a medium of communication and data sharing for large scale organisations and so far haven’t targeted Kano Electricity Distribution Company. The researcher feels that the research topic was effectively analyzed and investigated based on the various chapters above. The researcher believes that the findings would have been more factual in nature if the financial aspect of the Kano Electricity Distribution Company communication and infrastructure (questionnaire) would have been shared by electricity industries. Also if the financial information been shared by the electricity industry, it would have been more specific for the researcher to state the cost effective benefits VPN provide to Kano Electricity Distribution Company. There was gap of product interoperability found in the early developing phases of the VPN which got standardized on the basis of security i.e. the protocols used by the VPN software. There are various products of VPN based on software’s (protocols, the tunneling, the speed and data transmission over the OSI reference model etc.) and hardware such as (servers and clients of various vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft etc.) The cost of VPN also depends on the number of clients i.e. the users which use the system, the speed of data transmission, and the level of security i.e. the encryption, encapsulations, digital certificates and signatures it used to keeps data secured.
The Research report gives a detail view of how VPN can benefit Kano Electricity Distribution Company in various factors. The report also discussed about the key aspects of VPN such as product interoperability, hidden cost and security and bandwidth, which the company should look after, before the implementation.
The Research also gives a detail recommendation for the company which can be extremely benefited by implementing VPN.
Limitation /Drawbacks
There were quite a few limitations faced during the project life cycle which acted as barriers to fulfill the desired goals of the research. The major aspect of the benefit VPN provides to the large organizations is because these organizations have many sub divisions or small offices which are located in different geographical locations. Managing security of sharing the information or data with the use of leased lines is far more expensive and also not a secured medium of communication. Also large organisations need to share huge amount of information within the firm, with the enterprises associated with the firm and also to the external audience which is indirectly dependent on other organisations. The Internet is a prime medium to share information but is un-trusted and unreliable in terms of securing the data when it is transmitting from one end to other. The VPN provides this facility of keeping the data secured while its transmitting using the method of tunneling as mentioned in chapter two (part A). Also the key aspect of scalability provided by the VPN makes it extremely attracted to implement as you can enhance the approach and infrastructure as per the change which appears in different organization communication needs. This change was very expensive and time consuming when it comes to leased lines. Thus the VPN provides flexibility. The VPN technology had few problems in the area of product interoperability which was standardized with the use of IP sec. The use of IP sec made the VPN compatible with almost all the systems present. It was very difficult to figure out the needs and requirements of Kano Electricity Distribution Company as every industry has its own needs and requirements as per the size, scale and the work it undertakes. It was noticed that the VPN is beneficial to Kano Electricity Distribution Company on the following grounds:
- The company has to have a minimum of 50 to 100 employees which requires a communication infrastructure.
- The company requires an Internet background for communication. (e.g. A VPN is of no use to a company which is in carpentry or pottery.)
- The company based on the work that can be undertaken from long distance. E.g. a programmer can code the software, sitting at his home and can share his part to the office without him actually being present in the office.
- If company have workers who need to be on different field places e.g. field of Logistics.
- The company which has its joints in different geographical locations e.g. Hotels and tourisms.
These are the limitations, where only companies which come under these grounds are benefited by the VPN. So the researcher believes that picking-up of these companies and focusing on them for the benefits, the VPN provide to them is a limitation of this report.
The researcher also has complete knowledge that ‘every technology discovered or invented in the world can benefit every single industry’.
Resources
The researcher made a significant use of the written as well as online text available to the researcher. The researcher has made an extensive use of books from the library and also the online text available from the Internet. The researcher was not able to find any prior cases of research done on the area of research taken which makes this research area completely new and original. The VPNC corporate website for VPN provided a huge amount of information in the sector of VPN. The information was gathered from the books and Internet resources. Kano Electricity Distribution Company information was much more dependent on the primary research done by the researcher. The researcher has also made huge information available of online or written articles, journals and magazines which were made available by the library.
Future Work
The demands of the world are increasing day by day and the technology is developed to full fill the requirements. The needs of the world in the late nineties were to have a network which could provide connectivity from portable devices. The access to this type of network was fulfilled with the use of wireless technologies which allowed the access to Internet where wired connection was almost impossible. These technologies were enhanced in last few decades with respect to factors such as connectivity. The need of today’s world is keeping the information private, the emphasis on keeping data secured gave birth to technologies such as VPN, which provide high level of security using tunneling, different encryption techniques and various information securing methods. More investigation can be done on the grounds of reliability of these methods and applying the security techniques used by the VPN on other communication network systems.
Short Summary and Conclusion
The research done over “How Virtual Private Networks might benefit Electricity Industry (Kano Electricity Distribution Company)” makes it obvious that the VPN technology can be beneficial to all the electricity industries which prefer to implement it. However, it has been recommended that the electricity industries which have a communication network requirement of scalability, remote access, and secure sharing of information over long distances can extremely benefit by implementing a VPN solution. The report has a short coming in the financial aspect of the benefit due to lack of real and practical information shared by Kano Electricity Distribution Company (Questionnaire) on the cost of expenditure over communication network yet it provides a brief overview of the pros and cons of implementing a VPN technology as a solution for the industry communication and information sharing.
REFERENCES
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- BIRD, T., (1998), Building VPNs: The Ten Point Plan, Data Communications, Vol.27, No.9.
- BURNES, G., and STROLLER, G.,(1999). Virtual Private Networking: The Next Revolution in Corporate productivity, Shiva Corporation.
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- DERFLER Jr Frank, and FREED, Leis (2005). How networks work. 7th ed. Indianapolis: QUE.
- Dumas, B. M. and Schwartz, M. (2009).Principles of computer networks and communications. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
- GILL, J. and JOHNSON, P. (2002).Research Methods for Managers, 3 ed., London, California and New Delhi: Sage.
