[invaliduser]

Not OP, but as the name suggests, a VPN is a virtual private network: you can use it to create a private subnet from where you can securely access your other computers/resources, even from a remote location.

For instance, at work we are mostly remote, and use a VPN (OpenVPN here) to access the local network at the office with our on-premise build servers, and it also allows developers to work together sometimes (one running a debugging server on their dev laptop, another debugging the client from their own laptop as if they were sharing a local network, when actually they are hundreds of miles apart)

[ripdog]

Thanks, but I don't need the wikipedia summary of a VPN.

It didn't sound ad all like the OP was using his VPN to dial into work. He was dialing into a purpose-build VM which wasn't stated to do anything else - just tunneling his traffic for some unknown reason.