PPP vs PPTP

dsjellesma

I had a question for some of you more qualified people. I am a little confused about the difference between PPP & PPTP. I know that PPP is used to establish a connection b/t two networking nodes, and that PPTP is the tunneling equivalent. I'm just not sure in what situations one is used over the other?

Is it that PPP is used to dial DIRECTLY into to say..a company network, whereas PPTP is used to create a virtual private network over the internet?

(I know that PPTP is basically replaced by L2TP which uses IPSec to encapsulate packets and send them through the network layer. Still need to know PPTP for the exam tomorrow though )

dynamik

dsjellesma wrote: »

Is it that PPP is used to dial DIRECTLY into to say..a company network, whereas PPTP is used to create a virtual private network over the internet

Yea, that's essentially what it boils down to.

dsjellesma

Thanks for clearing that up for me and for the quick reply.

TravR1

Yeah you hit it right on the money.

PPTP ecapsulates/encryptes PPP traffic, and L2TP only ecapsulates. You need IPSec to encrypt L2TP traffic, but you'd only do that if you were needing to send data through PSTN links, otherwise just use IPSec and save the L2TP overhead.

L2TP scales better across networks because it can used with other protocols besides IP, and it's PPTP combined with Cisco's L2F protocol.