> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.prequel.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Connection modalities

> Understanding Prequel's various source and destination connection options

| Connection option                             | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| --------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Username & password**                       | By default, most sources and destinations are accessed via single-purpose users. These users can be used in combination with other connection options (like SSH tunneling, IP whitelisting, or RBAC accounts) for enhanced security.                                                                                                                                                                      |
| **Service accounts**                          | Where available, Prequel also supports accessing sources and destinations via special purpose service accounts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| **SSH tunneling**                             | Some sources and destinations are not exposed to the public internet, but are instead accessed via an SSH tunnel through a bastion host in the same VPC. Prequel supports SSH tunneling on sources and destinations that support it.                                                                                                                                                                      |
| **IP whitelisting**                           | Some sources and destinations support enhanced access control by restricting access to an IP whitelist. In most deployments, the Prequel service will be deployed behind a set of static IPs that can be whitelisted for this purpose.                                                                                                                                                                    |
| **Role-based access control (RBAC) accounts** | In some cases, the owner of a multi-tenanted source or destination may wish for a given tenant's data to be accessed with a tenant-specific user. For these cases, Prequel supports using tenant-specific users and credentials to access data.<br /><br />**Note:** using this method will incur additional operational overhead as a new user will need to be generated for each additional connection. |
| **Key-Pair**                                  | Prequel can generate public/private key pairs, and supported source & destination systems can whitelist the public key for passwordless auth.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |