Performance analysis of video conferencing applications with use of firewall and virtual private network (VPN) in different networks

The developments in information technologies have made these technologies indispensable elements of our lives with application areas such as e-government, e-commerce, e-health, e-learning. Particularly the global Covid-19 pandemic period has led to forced developments in e-learning and e-meeting application areas, the infrastructure of which is formed by video conferencing technology. Video conferencing allows users who are simultaneously in different locations to communicate via video and audio over the internet using specific applications. In video conferencing technology, there is a real-time, bidirectional, and large-scale data flow between the calling and called users. Developments in technology, which cause the rapid increase of applications served over internet, also cause a significant increase in the number of devices connected to internet and the data traffic flowing over internet. As a result, the security needs of applications used over internet, such as video conferencing applications, are increasing in proportion to the increasing security threat risks. The use of firewall and VPN (Virtual Private Network) are the most basic security solutions for applications used over internet. A firewall is a device, which is positioned between a corporate network and the internet cloud, filtering incoming and outgoing traffic to and from the network according to defined rules. Thus, the firewall plays the role of allowing traffic that complies with the rules and blocking traffic that does not. VPN, on the other hand, provides a secure point-to-point connection to a corporate network through the internet cloud. While doing this process, it provides data communication between the two end nodes using virtual connections called IP (Internet Protocol) tunnels. This study analyses the effects of using video conferencing applications with firewall and VPN in different networks on application performance. Analysis of these effects will be the basis for future improvements in network protocols, network components and video conferencing applications. In the study in which the simulation method was used, the data obtained from the simulation of different scenarios created with OPNET tool were analyzed comparatively.