Types of tunneling protocols
As we have learned in the previous sections, a tunnel is a way of shipping a foreign protocol across a network that will not support it directly. Let's take a look at the different tunneling protocols and their characteristics to see how this is done.
The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol is also known as PPTP. This was created by a consortium including Microsoft and other companies. PPTP is a fast protocol that, besides Windows, is also available to Linux and Mac users.
While PPTP does not have an inbuilt capability to provide traffic encryption, it relies on the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) to provide security measures during transmission.
PPTP allows traffic with different protocols to be encrypted and then encapsulated in an IP datagram to be sent across an IP network such as the Internet.
PPTP encapsulates PPP frames in the IP datagrams using a modified version of Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE). A TCP connection is used...