A Virtual Private Network (VPN) creates a private communication path over the public network to ensure the security of the transmitted data. A plethora of VPN tunneling protocols has been developed for the site-to-site and remote access of the applications. A critical challenge for an organization is to select an appropriate VPN protocol considering the application requirements. In this paper, Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) protocols have been exploited to determine the application suitability of the VPN tunneling mechanism selected for remote access. End-to-end Throughput, Round Trip Time, and Jitter along heterogeneous hardware environments have been investigated to determine the performance of the VPN tunneling techniques. Experimental results depict that MPLS is suitable for real-time audio-video, web, e-mail, and file-sharing applications. IPSec and L2TP are more applicable to the web, e-mail, and file-sharing applications and not suitable for streaming applications due to high jitter and latency.