Software

VPN is designed to be a powerful tool for businesses and corporate networks to allow workers to connect remotely, so there are a lot of setup and configuration options available to tailor VPN to a network so when installing there will be a bit of work required to get the service operational, but after that it will run unattended.

For those with Windows Server a full VPN service is available to install and run. As it is a fully featured version there will be more configuration required to begin with and may become complicated as miss-configurations wont present themselves and you could be left scratching your head over them. That said when working it will be reliable and a service that can be left alone to work when needed.

Windows Workstation operating systems do not have the ability to function as a full VPN server, however with a bit of creative configuration can be allowed to accept incoming connections from outside devices and give the impression of a VPN service. The install process is a lot simpler but may not be completely configurable to all needs, but still will function as a basic VPN service.

If a Windows solution is out of reach or not suitable then there are 3rd party options available for the Windows operating system, with the most commonly used option being OpenVPN. This is an open source design that has the power to provide a full VPN Server, mainly used for Linux it has a Windows installer to make things easier. As with most Linux based software ported to Windows configuration is done via editing text files rather than a GUI. However with most open source products there is a large online community ready to give advice and support.