VPN tunnels are used to connect remote equipment to corporate intranets to create private connections over an ordinarily public network. Problems arise when multiple VPNs are being managed and when the connections exist of specific network segments, such as but not limited to wireless, satellite, cellular, and fiber optics. The disclosed invention allows the VPN tunnel to be broken and a Manipulated VPN to be established in the break. The Manipulated VPN allows for an improvement in efficiency in that manipulation equipment located at each side of the VPN break can emulate the destination equipment and thus, speed the data transfer. To accommodate the use of private IP addresses in this environment, bits of the time to live field are utilized to represent the particular VPN in which a destination private IP address resides.