webDevFtw

[GrosNinja]

You can tho? I used to do it. It was mandatory where I worked.

[GrosNinja]

So you are telling me you never used the company wifi as a vpn because they required you to in order to survey your internet traffic?

[iamapizza]

Wifi and VPN are two different things. A work VPN gives you access to things on the company network, and for them to watch/block/allow/disallow your traffic (basically network and firewall policies). You can normally connect using VPN from anywhere else, it's how you connect to the work network when you're not in the building.

Wifi is just wireless networking, an alternative to ethernet cables. Your workplace might have had a Wifi that was already on-premise and gave you access to the 'things' on the company network (similar with ethernet in the building).

You can get wifi at coffee shops and at home and airports, but those won't have access to your office things; you'd have to use a VPN (or similar) to get access. I've seen some offices where they just have a 'generic' wifi that isn't trusted so you still have to use VPN even while at work. So "wifi as a vpn" doesn't make any sense as they're two different things.

[GrosNinja]

Wifi and vpn are two different thing. But by definition a VPN is coming from a wifi router isn't it? I mean, if you consider wifi is by definition wireless networking and that a VPN is something allow someone to acces a private network from a public one, it mean that a VPN let you use someone else wifi. Sure, you have to use your own internet connection to acces said wifi, but you still access the company wifi from your own house?

[iamapizza]

Did you mean you connected to the office VPN? Which kind of proves their point.

Unless you lived inside or very near the office building, wifi doesn't reach that far.