The paper addresses the long-standing open problem of characterizing the capacity of the two-user Gaussian interference channel. The authors show that existing outer bounds on the capacity region can be arbitrarily loose in certain parameter ranges and derive new outer bounds to address this issue. They propose a simplified Han-Kobayashi type scheme that achieves rates within 1 bits/s/Hz of the channel capacity for all values of the channel parameters. This scheme is asymptotically optimal at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The key feature of the scheme is setting the power of private information such that it is received at the level of Gaussian noise at the other receiver, minimizing interference while maintaining a significant amount of private information. The paper also provides a natural generalization of the degrees of freedom concept to interference-limited scenarios, defining generalized degrees of freedom for the symmetric case. The results are validated through simulations and theoretical analysis, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the tightness of the derived bounds.The paper addresses the long-standing open problem of characterizing the capacity of the two-user Gaussian interference channel. The authors show that existing outer bounds on the capacity region can be arbitrarily loose in certain parameter ranges and derive new outer bounds to address this issue. They propose a simplified Han-Kobayashi type scheme that achieves rates within 1 bits/s/Hz of the channel capacity for all values of the channel parameters. This scheme is asymptotically optimal at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The key feature of the scheme is setting the power of private information such that it is received at the level of Gaussian noise at the other receiver, minimizing interference while maintaining a significant amount of private information. The paper also provides a natural generalization of the degrees of freedom concept to interference-limited scenarios, defining generalized degrees of freedom for the symmetric case. The results are validated through simulations and theoretical analysis, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the tightness of the derived bounds.