What is PPTP?
PPTP stands for Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol. It’s a tunnelling protocol designed to encapsulate the LAN protocols IPX and AppleTalk within IP, for transmission across the Internet or other IP-based networks. Originally developed by a consortium of major network players (Microsoft, Ascend, 3Com, ECI Telemetric and U.S. Robotics) as a generic encapsulation mechanism, with security features being added later rather built-in from the ground up, PPTP proprietary systems have flourished butMicrosoft’s remain the most widely implemented version. Flawed with numerous security concerns, PPTP is nowhere near providing the safety and privacy level required for VPN. Hence the emergence of protocols like RADIUS that can use PPTP to provide a gateway to NT domain security while not solely relying on it for flawed security functions such as key encryption.
Point-to-point tunnelling protocol is a remote access technology for VPN’s. With PPTP remote users such as road warriors and those home workers with or without broadband can securely access the companies BizGuardian VPN from a Windows PC. (Windows 98 and above include the Microsoft VPN software required to connect to BizGuardians PPTP server.) New: See the PPTP Setup How-To page to see how quickly you can setup a PPTP Server using BizGuardian.
PPTP is a tunneling protocol defined by the PPTP forum that allows PPP packets to be encapsulated within Internet Protocol (IP) packets and forwarded over any IP network, including the Internet itself. The PPTP is supported in Windows NT and Windows 98 already. For Windows 95, it needs to be upgraded by the Dial-Up Networking 1.2 upgrade.
