A VoIP VPN combines voice over IP and virtual private network technologies to offer a method for delivering secure voice. Because VoIP transmits digitized voice as a stream of data, the VoIP VPN solution accomplishes voice encryption quite simply, applying standard data-encryption mechanisms inherently available in the collection of protocols used to implement a VPN.

The VoIP gateway-router first converts the analog voice signal to digital form, encapsulates the digitized voice within IP packets, then encrypts the digitized voice using IPsec, and finally routes the encrypted voice packets securely through a VPN tunnel. At the remote site, another VoIP router decodes the voice and converts the digital voice to an analog signal for delivery to the phone.

A VoIP VPN can also run within an IP in IP tunnel or using SSL-based OpenVPN. There is no encryption in former case, but traffic overhead is significantly lower in comparison with IPsec tunnel. The advantage of OpenVPN tunneling is that it can run on a dynamic IP and may provide up to 512 bits SSL encryption.