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PPTP
PPTP, or Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, is a VPN protocol developed by Microsoft to enable secure data transfer through encryption and encapsulation. While it historically allowed users to create secure communication tunnels over public networks, today it is largely considered outdated due to its well-known security vulnerabilities..
Microsoft's Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is one of the earliest VPN protocols, designed to provide secure transmission of data over IP networks by encapsulating PPP packets inside GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) tunnels. Operating primarily on TCP port 1723 for control and GRE for data, it facilitates user authentication and encryption for remote connections to a VPN server.
The design of PPTP is relatively straightforward, relying on a combination of the PPP authentication framework, which supports protocols like PAP and MS-CHAP, and MPPE (Microsoft Point-to-Point Encryption) to achieve confidentiality. Its simplicity led to widespread adoption due to its native support across many Microsoft Windows systems without the need for additional software.
Despite its popularity, PPTP's reliance on TCP port 1723 and GRE makes it susceptible to network issues like packet filtering or NAT traversal difficulties. Modern networks frequently block or restrict GRE traffic, which can disrupt PPTP connections, and its outdated encryption methods no longer meet today's standards for secure communications.