At the moment of this writing we support two different protocols over which you can create the VPN connection from your computer to our VPN servers, the PPTP (Point-To-Point Transfer Protocol) and the L2TP (Layer 2 Transfer Protocol).
Today you will see which protocol you should go for as sometimes the PPTP would be better for your needs and expectations, while some other times, you would be better off using connection over L2TP instead, so lets see their differences.
First, you should check out our articles on PPTP as well as on the L2TP. That way you will have the info about what to expect from each protocol followed by the direct comparison between the two. If you have just stumbled on our page and do not quite understand what is it about VPN and protocols you should catch up on the what is VPN first.
| Compared on | PPTP | L2TP |
| Ease of deployment (manually) | Very Easy | Requires more details to be entered correctly |
| QoS | If any damaged or lost packets are detected, they can be asked to be resubmitted | If lost packages are found they can not be resubmitted but instead more data needs to be resent to you using more bandwidth |
| Support | Much easier to find support (technicians) while it also supports a lot more devices and systems as it comes as standard on them | Its complicated structure leaves a lot of space for something to go wrong especially since it is not supported by all hardware and software (although today most do) |
| Security | Less secure with encryption going to 128bit | Much more secure with its more advanced encryption of up to 256bit |
| Speed | Lower security allows it to provide fast connection | It requires more CPU power because of the security it provides, but with modern computers you should not see it impacting your performance |
| Time to become protected | First needs to have PPP authentication completed in order to start encrypting the connection. | The PPP authentication is done after the connection is encrypted, giving you better security as no one can sniff any data sent even when establishing connection |
| Certificate support | Not required | It is required to have proper certificate infrastructure to be able to deploy and provide L2TP |
| Firewall | Limited by firewalls by default, because of the GRE protocol that the PPTP depends on | Better support from firewalls as it does not depend on the GRE protocol as the PPTP does meaning that there is less chance that it is blocked. |
| Countries supported | It is being blocked by some countries and ISP’s as it is known as the protocol for establishing VPN connections | Not blocked by countries nor ISP’s as it would be very difficult to find if someone is connecting to the VPN connection over L2TP |
So what is the outcome of this PPTP vs L2TP challenge?
Lets check it out:
Currently it looks as 5 to 4 with PPTP just barely winning, but what exactly can you see from the results above? If you are after a fast connection that will protect you and your privacy no matter what hardware you have (especially if you are using old hardware), go for PPTP it is great and has everything you need to stay protected. If you however require better protection of your privacy and have newer hardware you should go for L2TP as it will make it much harder for others to find out something about you even if they try very very hard.
Which protocol won the battle for you? Do you know some other factor that we forgot to take into account? Let us know and we will update our comparison table.