Subscriber-Managed VPNs

The first category is not properly the province of the service provider at all. Here the subscriber
simply leases an Internet connection from the service provider and takes full responsibility for
setting up the tunnels (described shortly) over which VPN transmissions take place. Customer
premises equipment assigns the VPN traffic to various tunnels, and the service operator has no
role in traffic handling beyond maintaining an IP pipe to the customer. Essentially VPNs of this
type cannot be considered services and thus bring little benefit to the service provider beyond
perhaps some additional sales of bandwidth. Some service providers find this arrangement
appealing since it makes no particular demands upon them, but, on the other hand, it does not
allow the service provider to charge the customer extra for VPN services. In other words, it is
not a profit center.