JoAnns Eatery Solutions is a medium-sized company that makes packaged Thai foods including noodle and sauce combinations. Their foods are distributed to grocery stores and specialty food stores throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States. The company is moving into a new building and has hired Stratton Technical Solutions to help them create a new network. Before the move, their head network administrator accepted a job with another company and his inexperienced assistant has been promoted as the head network administrator. JoAnns Eatery Solutions has a business and sales unit of 42 computer users. The plant in which the foods are produced, packaged, and shipped has 45 computer users. The company has both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. The business and sales unit uses Windows 7 workstations. The plant users have a combination of Windows 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux computers on users desktops. The company plans to have Internet connectivity available to all network users. JoAnns Eatery Solutions has an outlet store across town, which provides the public with direct sales of its products. The outlet store also has Internet connectivity on a small network of 12 computers that are running Windows 7.

For WAN communications, such as over the Internet connection, what protocol should be used by the Windows 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux workstations? What are the advantages of this protocol?