What function of VPN Concentrator?

[sarif]

Hi everyone... I have confuse about vpn concentrator, anybody help me to describe what is vpn concentrator mean? Thanks

[emnoc]

VPN concentrator is a fancy way of saying vpn gateway device. Typically it' s used to reference a device that concentrator multiple vpn users or tunnels. You can also refer to it as vpn firewall device.

[davidolea]

VPN concetrator give you the option to create a hub and spoke VPN, used mainly in some distributed topologys, where you need to centralize resources and access them by a secure connection.

[Istvan_Takacs_FTNT]

...or a simple SSL VPN connection. Basically if you enable VPN (IPsec or SSL VPN) on your Fortigate, than you can be a proud owner of an advanced VPN concentrator.

[ede_pfau]

David is right - VPN concentrator in the context of FortiOS denotes the central element of a hub-and-spoke VPN where multiple remote sites are connected to a central hub (usually the HQ). Every other meaning is not wrong but somebody else' s marketing...

[DannyM]

In FortiOS 5.4 this comes back as a setting in the GUI.

According to the Manual:

Concentrator

In a hub-and-spoke configuration, policy-based VPN connections to a number of remote peers radiate from a single, central FortiGate unit. Site-to-site connections between the remote peers do not exist; however, you can establish VPN tunnels between any two of the remote peers through the FortiGate unit’s “hub”. In a hub-and-spoke network, all VPN tunnels terminate at the hub. The peers that connect to the hub are known as “spokes”. The hub functions as a concentrator on the network, managing all VPN connections between the spokes. VPN traffic passes from one tunnel to the other through the hub. You define a concentrator to include spokes in the hub-and-spoke configuration. You create the concentrator in VPN > IPsec Concentrator and select Create New. A concentrator configuration specifies which spokes to include in an IPsec hub-and-spoke configuration.

Settings: Concentrator Name: Type a name for the concentrator.

Available Tunnels: A list of defined IPsec VPN tunnels. Select a tunnel from the list and then select the right arrow.

Members: A list of tunnels that are members of the concentrator. To remove a tunnel from the concentrator, select the tunnel and select the left arrow.