Older and Future VPN technologies?

M

macrospect

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2004
Messages
1,711
I am beginning a paper for one of my courses and we are to report on an older VPN technology that is either considered extinct or is not widely used anymore. Additionally, we need to report on a future VPN technology that is not commonly deployed yet (something above today's IPSec tunnels).

Do any of you have any ideas or insight as to which VPN's would fit under these categories? I am thinking that a L2TP tunnel may be appropriate for an older technology however I am not sure if there is something older than this (ie X.25 protocols)? :confused:
 
PPTP is an all but extinct VPN technology since it generally was used without any encryption.

L2TP is still used.
 
Thanks for the clarification. I am going to do some research this morning to see what I can find on PPTP. Thanks for the replying so quickly.
 
That is where I am looking right now. This project mainly concerns the shortcomings so the more the merrier!
 
Compare old....such as PPTP, early adaptations and later adaptations. Still actually widely used today.

Then IPSec...with the many 3rd party variations and clunky/troublesome IPSec clients.

And newer smoother less troublesome products....SSL. Done via the browser, hardly any client side install (usually just a tiny java based browser plugin)

Can even include some nicer open source products such as OpenVPN.
 
YeOldeStonecat- So would PPTP not be considered a dated protocol since it has adapted to todays needs? I was under the assumption that it is no longer used. I was researching on PPTP and see that its RFC was made in 1990 however I am under the impression that it has adapted to run on IP-based networks. Whether or not it is still widely used today is what I am trying to figure out.
 
As far as VPNs goes you won't see much if any use of PPTP any longer. The last time I used a PPTP client was around 5-7 years ago. L2TP and IPSEC have largely replaced it and as stonecat said the new SSL VPN technologies are starting to catch on as well. PPTP is definitely "dated" by any definition of the word and a strong case can be made for the aforementioned protocols that have replaced them in common use.

I can't think of any protocols that are totally gone. Perhaps SLIP or CSLIP meets your criteria better although they were more of a remote access protocol than a "VPN" which really didn't exist back then.
 
criccio- That is an excellent idea. Thank you very much for your feedback for a future one. I looked over its preliminaries and it looks more than ideal for this project's requirements. I am working on IPSec as the current one right now but will look into DirectAccess after I am finished up with some of this section. As for the past, I am still unsure as to what I will use for that. Are there any technologies that used to operate over older X.25 circuits (which are really no longer used)?
 
DaRkF0g said:
YeOldeStonecat- So would PPTP not be considered a dated protocol since it has adapted to todays needs? I was under the assumption that it is no longer used. I was researching on PPTP and see that its RFC was made in 1990 however I am under the impression that it has adapted to run on IP-based networks. Whether or not it is still widely used today is what I am trying to figure out.
Click to expand...

It's still widely used, I run across it a lot, and quite frankly...I still use it myself to connect to some smaller clients. Well..maybe I haven't used it in the past year...perhaps last time was last summer. I don't have Server OS's do the job anymore..I would not expose their RRAS service to the public side of their firewall for this, but I have some edge routers setup with their own PPTP VPN service to allow me to remote into the device. Yes it has a few vulnernabilities, but it's commonly used by "road warriors" that connect part time to a central office infrastructure (like..remote into the office for an hour or three to do some work). It wouldn't be smart to use it for setting up full time VPN tunnels.

When you run the network connection setup wizard in XP/Vista/Windows 7....and select the option to connect to your workplace..that's setting up a PPTP VPN dialer.

Yes it's definitely becoming less and less common...but it's still out there.

To what percentage of overall VPN users today still use PPTP? I don't know how to figure that out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it be between 25-50%.

I think it has only relatively recently taken a sharp drop in popularity only because of many companies having to follow more HIPAA like regulations....combined with the more affordable and simple offerings of SSL VPN becoming available on the market. Prior to a couple of years ago, when IPSec was the leader in technologies...implementing IPSec was costly and required quite a bit of IT support since it's clunky and often troublesome to support.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top