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.