Which term describes carrying private communications over the public Internet using tunneling or port forwarding?

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Creating a secure private channel over the public Internet via tunneling is what a virtual private network does. A VPN wraps your traffic in encryption and encapsulation, sending it through the public Internet as if it were part of a private network. Tunneling protocols handle the encapsulation, forming a secure tunnel between your device and the VPN server, while port forwarding can direct traffic from the client into the VPN gateway to reach internal resources. This arrangement protects data from eavesdroppers and lets remote users access internal networks as if they were on-site. By contrast, a wide area network covers broad geographic areas, a local area network stays within a small area like a building, and Wireless Fidelity refers to Wi‑Fi technology, not the private tunnel mechanism.