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How to hide ip: VPN Protocols – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol

VPN Protocols – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol

Posted: 17 Aug 2011 12:32 AM PDT

In my upcoming series I will be throwing some light on the various VPN protocols that are being used to provide different VPN services. VPN services have popped up like crazy in last few years and it has become important for Internet users to understand the intricacies of VPN services so that they aren’t easily fooled. There is nothing worst than giving away money for a pathetic service.

For starters we will throw light on PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol) which was developed by Microsoft in association with many other technology companies. PPTP is said to be the most widely used VPN method when compared to the other available protocols.

An important point worth noting is that PPTP does not comes loaded with authentication or encryption features. It solely relies on tunneling in order to implement security functionality. With time various companies have started to push out their own form of PPTP which comes loaded with various security features. One must understand that the base PPTP format isn’t secure but it can be made secure.

PPTP can be considered as an extension of PPP (Point to Point Protocol) which happens to be the link layer protocol that is used to transmit IP packets over serial links. Authentications similar to that of PPP can be used with PPTP connections. PPTP can be used with Microsoft Point to Point Encryption (shortly termed as MPPE) protocol in order to make it secure. Due to the exclusion of many features PPTP becomes faster when compared to different other protocols.

PPTP was built by Microsoft henceforth most of the PPTP services are already installed in the Windows Operating System. This makes it easy for users to trust PPTP based VPN services as these won’t request you to install any software. PPTP based VPN will simply use the already installed PPTP client in Windows Operating System thus making life quiet easy.

Linux does not comes loaded with PPTP but clients for Linux based machines are available on the Internet. MAC based machines come loaded with PPTP support with third party clients also available for MAC. PPTP VPN services are well know around the Internet henceforth you will see that many firewalls do support various PPTP based services. Lastly, some of the Android based cell phones also support PPTP.

With advent of time multiple security vulnerabilities were found with PPTP based VPN services which resulted in other protocols popping up. We will learn more about other protocols in my upcoming articles.

Salman Siddiqui is an expert technology analyst and regularly blogs on his tech. blog CompuWorld. His vast experience of freelance writing is backed by his passion to swim against the tide. You can grab him on Twitter.

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VPN Protocols – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol