What the heck is a tunnel? OK, then, what is a VPN?

How hard is it to describe the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a completely non-technical person? Come to find out, it is fairly difficult! Chris Young - one of our esteemed co-hosts - tweeted out a seemingly simple question: “Explain the difference between a tunnel and a VPN to a non/technical audience.”. Proposed answers were given, a variety of interpretations of "non-technical audience" were made. Hilarity ensued. which really begs the questions: what the heck ARE tunnels? What are VPNs? Think you know? So did we. Take a trip with us through our winding exploration as we dive into the abyss of the ocean of possibilities - all aboard the RV Calypso of encapsulation. List of Tunneling mechanisms: Encapsulation VXLAN GENEVE GRE mGRE NVGRE OTV IP in IP 6 in 4 4 in 6 EoIP PPTP CAPWAP DTLS GTP (GPRS Tunnelling Protocol) Q-in-Q IPSec L2TP HTTPS Tunnelling DNS Tunnelling SSH Tunnelling TOR L2F ISATAP Teredo Wireguard MACSEC Control Plane EVPN L2VPNs L3VPNs MVPN Label Stacks LDP VPLS RSVP-TE SR (V6/MPLS) 128T (NDN-esque) DOVE All in One ZeroTier Wireguard