What's the difference between the VLAN and the VPN, and which one is more secure to use?

VPNs are used to create a secure "channel" to transfer information thru insecure channels. In other words, if you want to connect a branch office to your main office you can:1.- Buy a Leased line between the offices2.- Establish a VPN between the office that uses Internet (the "insecure channel"). Ofcourse, option2 is the "cheapest" one and the most common today. With VPNs you have mainly (with MS implementations) PPTP and L2TP/IPSEC. Also you can just use IPSEC alone. Typical VPN scenarios:1.- Host - to - Host2.- Host - to - Gateway3.- Gw - to Gw (main / branch office) VLANs, is a completely different thing. You use VLANs to create smaller networks (create segments) in your existing LAN. For this to happen, you need a switch that supports VLANs and a router to route between VLANs. Each VLAN you create acts like a separate network (divides what is called Broadcast domains) so in order for each VLAN to see other VLANs you need a router. VLANs offers better security (you can "zone" the network and apply packet filtering), improove the network traffic (ie a broadcast storm only affects the local VLAN and not the whole LAN), and better administration (you can automatically assign ports to VLANs). Hope this helps!

VPN is more secure than Vlan as data is secure as it goes over internet whereas through vlans you can connect different computers that are not connected with same switch and in same broadcast domain