Virtual Private Networks: Making the Right Connection

By Dennis Fowler

9.8 A Review of the Protocols

9.8 A Review of the Protocols

At this point, since they have a major impact on the architectural options you have available to you, it's worth taking a look at the VPN protocols we discussed earlier. (For a more detailed understanding of how they work, you'll want to refer to Chapters 5?8.) To help you with your planning, Table 9-2 summarizes the differences and similarities in terms of architectural options, security, remote access applicability, ability to transport foreign networking packets such as IPX, scalability, their chances of interoperability among products from competing vendors, etc. As you look over this table, keep in mind the points discussed in the rest of this section. They may help ease your confusion.

Table 9-2 VPN protocols.

AltaVista

IPSec

L2TP

PPTP

Architectural
Options

C/S,
LAN/LAN

C/S,
NAS/NAS,
LAN/LAN

C/S,
C/NAS,
NAS/NAS,
LAN/LAN

Hides illegal
IP addresses

Yes

Carries
non-IP packets

Yes

Platform
availability

DEC

Windows,
Unix,
probable industry standard

Windows NT (v.5), Unix

Windows NT/95, some Unix

Remote
access

Good

Excellent

Network
to network

Good

Scalability

Good

Excellent

Good

Fair

OSI layer

Data link
and network

Data link

Encryption
specified

RC4 128 bit domestic,
56 bit international

DES-CBC 56 bit

Not specified

Not specified (Windows version uses DES, 40, 56, and 128 bit)

Supports
IPSec for
security

N/A

Yes

Supports
X.509

Yes

Table 9-2 cont.

SKIP

SOCKS v.5

SSH2

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9.8 A Review of the Protocols

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