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VPN Protocols (Everything You Need To Know)
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VPN Protocols (Everything You Need To Know)


What is VPN Protocol?

  VPN protocols can be thought of as the technologies and services that VPN Services use to provide you with a secure and fast connection to and from VPN servers. A VPN protocol is a combination of encryption standards and data transfer protocols.



What VPN protocols are used in VPN?

  VPN service providers typically provide the following protocols to their users:

PPTP
L2TP / IPSec
OpenVPN
IKEv2
SSTP
SoftEther

The architecture of each VPN protocol is significantly different from the others, and therefore each has its own advantages and disadvantages. That is, a preliminary acquaintance can later play into your hands.



So which VPN protocol should you use?

  Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all standard, as needs vary from person to person. But you can certainly find the most suitable protocol for you that will meet almost all of your requirements. There are several characteristics of VPN protocols: performance, encryption level, security, compatibility, stability, and customizability.

  Let's take a look at each VPN protocol in the context of the characteristics mentioned above.



What is the most secure VPN protocol?

When it comes to security, then PPTP immediately disappears, since it has the lowest level of protection.

L2TP / IPSec and IKEv2 are considered secure because they encrypt data twice.

OpenVPN provides a high level of security and allows you to verify the authenticity of digital certificates.

SoftEther supports OpenVPN, EtherIP, L2TP / IPSec, and SSTP, which means it takes advantage of all protocols at the same time.

SSTP is considered very secure as it offers a high level of encryption and is able to connect to HTTPS sites over port 443, which is used by TLS.

Winner: OpenVPN



What's the fastest VPN protocol?

  Speed and encryption correlate for obvious reasons: good-quality encryption not only requires more processing power, but also more time, which slows down the overall network speed.

  PPTP is one of the fastest VPN tunneling protocols due to its low level of encryption.

  IKEv2, SoftEther and L2TP / IPSec are also faster, but OpenVPN is considered the slowest.

  SSTP is not as impressive in its performance as PPTP, but it beats OpenVPN in speed.

  Winner: PPTP

Which protocol offers the best encryption?



Encryption is the transformation of data into an illegible form when transferred to another device or for long-term storage. It is quite obvious that VPN encryption is used to prevent unauthorized access to data. All types of confidential information and data are stored encrypted; This protects organizations, businesses and ordinary people from fraud and other disruption.

PPTP uses 128-bit encryption based on Microsoft's MPPE protocol. MPPE protocol uses RC4 encryption from RSA, which supports encryption up to 128 bits.

L2TP / IPSec and IKEv2 / IPSec use 256-bit encryption based on the standardized IPSec protocol. It uses 3DES and AES for encryption, used by the NSA to work with classified information.

OpenVPN uses the OpenSSL library that supports 3DES, as well as other libraries that support 160-bit and 256-bit encryption.

SoftEther also uses 256-bit encryption, while SSTP uses a TLS connection with 2048-bit encryption.

Winner: OpenVPN and SoftEther

What's the most stable VPN protocol?


PPTP is used in most Wi-Fi routers and is considered stable.

L2TP / IPSec is compatible with NAT capable devices.

OpenVPN works great even on unreliable networks.

SoftEther, thanks to its permanent self-supporting connection, is able to bypass most firewalls.

SSTP is also considered stable, and is able to bypass NAT firewalls.

IKEv2 is really very stable when switching between networks, such as when switching from a cellular network to a Wi-Fi connection.

Winner: L2TP / IPSec, SoftEther and IKEv2

What VPN protocol do most platforms support?



PPTP supports the largest number of operating systems.

L2TP / IPsec also supports quite a few operating systems.

OpenVPN does not have native support for the main operating systems and therefore will have to use third party software.

IKEv2 is supported across platforms, but most importantly on BlackBerry devices, while most VPN protocols do not work on BlackBerry.

SSTP is limited to Windows only, but it supports all versions of this platform.

SoftEther does not have native support for major operating systems and therefore will have to use third party software.

Winner: PPTP and L2TP / IPSec

What's the easiest VPN to set up?



  PPTP is the easiest protocol to configure.

  L2TP / IPSec and IKEv2 are also easy to configure.

  OpenVPN is highly configurable, but it takes some experience to work with third-party software.

  SSTP is also highly configurable, and you can count on support from Microsoft.

  SoftEther is a new protocol, so it won't be easy to find any information about it on the Internet. Consequently, the setup process is somewhat more complicated.

  Winner: PPTP

Which VPN protocol consumes the least resources?


PPTP requires very little processing power due to its low level of encryption.

L2TP / IPSec and IKEv2 use more capacity because they encapsulate data twice.

The performance of OpenVPN is not that high, however, the protocol optimizes the consumption of computing power and works great on low-speed networks.

SoftEther uses more processing power as it relies on a software solution.

SSTP uses minimal resources due to significant integration into the platform itself.

Winner: SSTP

Briefly about each VPN protocol



  To choose the right VPN protocol, you first need to know what each one offers.

PPTP


PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol) was developed and created by Microsoft back in the 1990s. Due to its availability on all platforms, it is very common among VPN service providers. The most important characteristic of PPTP is its speed compared to other encryption protocols. It's easy to configure and comes as a built-in feature on most platforms.

However, some experts believe that this protocol may be less secure than others, even though all past security issues have been fixed. Therefore, if you are concerned about your security, then you should choose a different VPN protocol to connect. Often it is used by those who only need to get content limited to a specific region, since it works very quickly. If your main needs are speed and availability, then PPTP is an excellent choice.

L2TP / IPSec


L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) - due to its high performance and much higher level of security - was intended as a replacement for PPTP. Interestingly, L2TP itself does not support any kind of encryption, and uses IPSec for this purpose. It is also a built-in protocol in most modern operating systems, making it as easy to configure as PPTP.

In addition, L2TP / IPSec has no vulnerabilities, so it is of great value in terms of security and performance. However, it has the disadvantage that it works somewhat slower than other VPN protocols. Sometimes he is able to handle powerful firewalls.



OpenVPN

OpenVPN is one of the most popular protocols used by almost every VPN in the world. This is a relatively new VPN technology that uses a combination of other technologies such as SSLv3 and OpenSSL. This resulted in the best possible VPN solution. The same OpenSSL library provides encryption for many other algorithms, including AES, Camellia, and Blowfish.

The advantages of OpenVPN include an easy configuration process, a high level of security, support for many encryption algorithms, as well as good performance against firewalls and open source availability. But OpenVPN requires third-party software to work, which can be difficult to configure. While mobile support is provided here, it's not as good as desktop support yet. Regarding the speed in standard UDP mode, this algorithm should be faster than L2TP, but is unlikely to be faster than PPTP.

IKEv2


IKEv2 (Internet key exchange version 2) is a VPN protocol that was developed by Microsoft in collaboration with Cisco. It is an IPsec-based tunneling protocol with a wide range of benefits. From a security point of view, it equals or even surpasses L2TP / IPsec, while still offering fairly high performance.

One of the main advantages of IKEv2 is its support for the MOBIKE protocol, which makes it incredibly reliable in changing networks. This, in turn, makes IKEv2 one of the best for mobile users who switch between Wi-Fi and cellular, or simply move from one Internet access point to another. Another feature is that when used with Microsoft's VPN Connect, IKEv2 can automatically reconnect the VPN after a temporary loss of connection.

It is compatible with Windows and BlackBerry, and can also be used with Linux and other open source platforms. Although it is available on fewer platforms compared to other VPN protocols, experts consider it quite good in terms of stability, security and performance.

SSTP


SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) is also developed by Microsoft and therefore is tailored exclusively for Windows PCs. Accordingly, it cannot be checked for backdoors and is unlikely to ever support Apple devices. SSTP is very similar to OpenVPN because it uses the same SSLv3 protocol.

The main advantages of SSTP are its high level of security and the ability to bypass even powerful firewalls. If you're in a Windows environment and don't care about the likelihood that Microsoft has kept secret paths to your personal data, then SSTP is basically a well-integrated VPN solution with good security and easy configuration.

SoftEther


SoftEther is a relatively new VPN protocol developed in 2013 as an open source VPN replacement. It boasts good speed and reliable security measures, although due to its novelty it is still difficult to search for documentation on it. It supports SSL-VPN and IPSec, EtherIP, OpenVPN and L2TP, and is much faster than OpenVPN.

Besides significantly better performance compared to OpenVPN, SoftEther also offers many features not available in OpenVPN. For example, dynamic DNS functionality, packet filtering, GUI management, RPC control over HTTPS, virtual DHCP and NAT functionality, and delay, error, and packet loss generator. However, SoftEther is not as prevalent as other protocols used for VPN connections.

Outcome


  As you can see, protocols and standards have different characteristics; some offer a high level of protection, while others offer greater performance. It all depends solely on your needs and tasks, since you can sacrifice performance in order to get a higher level of protection and vice versa.

Sasha specially for Promo2day

PS: In this article I have shared with you information that I have studied for several years, tested different software. If there are errors, I think this is not a big problem, the article was written with the help of Google translator.
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Thanks for the useful guide Sasha
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