Psychz - Jorge
Votes: 0Posted On: Sep 10, 2019 11:46:52
A VPN helps in maintaining your privacy and secure your data whenever you are using the internet by assigning a new IP address and transmitting traffic through an encrypted tunnel. A VPN protects you when you are using all forms of public Wi-Fi by securely encrypting your data. Most large organizations still employ a VPN solution to facilitate secure remote access. But not all VPNs are safe, secure, and beneficial. Depending on the protocol they use, a VPN might have different capabilities or even vulnerabilities. Encryption protocols and ciphers are the heart of a VPN technology. Encryption Protocols determines how secure the tunnel is while transferring the data.
It is very important to choose the right VPN, but it is also very crucial to choose the best VPN protocol. The VPN protocol is how your VPN will secure the transferring of data. There’s a multitude of different protocols that are based on the operating system, platform, performance, and a lot more. Below we explore the most popular VPN protocols, so you can decide which one is best for you.
OpenVPN
OpenVPN is the VPN protocol that is one of the most popular and highly recommended by leading VPN providers today. It’s the most recommended choice by leading VPN providers today. OpenVPN is relatively a newer VPN protocol which has gained a lot of popularity because of its flexibility and security have made it one of the most commonly used. It is an open-source technology like the OpenSSL encryption library and SSL V3/TLS V1 protocols. OpenVPN is constantly maintained, updated, and inspected by a community of supporters.
Using OpenVPN, it is easy to get around the firewalls is easy because it can run on any port, using both UDP and TCP protocols. However, if you’re looking for speed, then using the UDP port will be the most efficient. In terms of security, it has a variety of methods and protocols like OpenSSL and HMAC authentication and shared keys.
SSL and TLS
The SSL protocol (Secure Socket Layer) – TLS (Transport Layer Security) uses a mixture of symmetric and public-key encryption to secure network communications. These are the most common encryption most people are familiar with. It is used by both OpenVPN and all HTTPS-secured sites. Using these protocols your web browser uses public-key encryption to communicate with a website’s server and share the symmetric keys used to secure the transmitted data. The only issue here emerges when a website’s server only uses one private key to initiate all secure sessions. The biggest challenge with these encryption key is that if this key is somehow compromised, a hacker can easily intercept and read any communications with that website.
PPTP
PPTP, also known as the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, was developed in 1995. And in spite of being so old, it still is one of the preferred choices of businesses for internal VPNs. What makes it popular is that it is already installed on most of the devices and platforms. Also, it is very easy to set up without needing additional software. You simply need a username, password, and server address to establish a secure connection. PPTP is largely used because till today, most of the computers in offices run on an older version of Windows Operating System, and PPTP is one of the reliable VPN protocols for decades that still run on older platforms.
Today, PPTP is a much-evolved encryption protocol with 128-bit key encryption. This low level of encryption makes it one of the fastest VPN protocols. This isn't great, but still serves the purpose for users who aren't highly concerned about security. PPTP also provides high performance and stability and hence it is widely popular compared to other VPN protocols.
L2TP/IPsec
Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol (LT2P) is a proprietary Microsoft protocol that creates a connection between you and the other servers in your VPN. Like IKEv2, it relies on other tools in the IPsec suite to encrypt and authenticate your traffic as it can’t perform these services itself. This protocol has a few convenient features, but various issues prevent it from outperforming its competitors.
Unlike other more sophisticated protocols, L2TP doesn’t have any smart ways to bypass firewalls. Surveillance-minded system administrators use firewalls to block VPNs to prevent users from hiding their traffic. People using L2TP here are an easy target as the protocol uses a relatively small number of fixed ports. L2TP encapsulates data twice; while this can be useful for some applications, it makes it slower compared to other protocols that encapsulate data only once.
Conclusion
When choosing a VPN protocol, one must keep the requirements in mind, and why you’re using a VPN. But, to keep things simple, you can’t go wrong when using OpenVPN. Hopefully, you have more clarity on choosing the right VPN protocol for your needs.
