In today's world, the security and privacy of data that travels through the cyberspace have become an essential concern for the individual users and the organizations. Apart from this, the government of many countries has also imposed many censorship rules on the way their citizens should use the Internet. All this has resulted in VPNs (Virtual Private Network) becoming very popular as it allows the users and organizations to secure and circumvent their Internet connection to a great extent. In this paper, we mainly study three types of most common VPNs and present a comparative study of their features, performance, security and a few other aspects. We hope that our research will offer a clear understanding of the users and will help them make their decision on choosing the correct VPN based on their need and priority regarding security, speed, and cost.

Eccentrically braced frames (EBFs) have good elastic stiffness, while semirigid joints can provide greater ductility and make all components easy to fabricate. With application of semirigid connections to EBFs, a seismic structure can be formed. After earthquake, damaged components can be easily replaced, and repair costs and maintenance time can be reduced. In order to study the seismic performance of this type of structure, four single‐story plane specimens were tested under low‐cycle cyclic loads. Also, a total of 7 EBF models were investigated through three‐dimensional, nonlinear finite element analysis. Good agreement is achieved between the simulation and experimental results. The results show that the failure modes of the EBFs with semirigid connections are the fracture at link end plate connection, and no obvious buckling deformation and cracks occur in the other components. The EBFs with semirigid connections exhibit good inelastic rotation ability, and the inelastic rotation of all specimens and models exceeds the limit of 2016 AISC specification. Due to the slip between members, the hysteretic curves of those new structures show different degrees of pinching phenomenon and it becomes more obvious with the increase of the length of links. By analyzing the strain of the bolts, it is found that the bolt strains of the joints of link‐to‐beam are the highest, while the bolt strains of the joints of beam‐to‐column and column‐to‐brace are smaller. This structure system shows higher energy dissipation capacity and good economic benefits.

In order to study how different connection types and floor height affect the seismic behavior of eccentrically braced steel frame, there has been processing 4 pseudo-static tests for eccentrically-braced steel frame, including two one-layer specimen and two three-layer specimen. The seismic behavior of the specimen has been analyzed according to hysteresis curve, carrying capacity, stiffness degeneration, ductility, and energy dissipation ability etc. The experiments’ results show that the connection types have greater impact on seismic behavior, adopting specimen destruction model of high-strength bolts connection as beam segment end-plate weld or web fracture. The rest of components do not appear significant yielding deformation and crack, which caters for post-earthquake restoration and replacement of energy dissipation beam segment. The carrying capacity of high-strength bolts connection specimen is slightly lower than welded connection specimen, but the ductility of the former is far beyond the welded specimen. Because of the slippage between components, hysteresis curves of bolts-connected eccentric braced steel frame structure appear to have pinned phenomenon with various degrees.