Are you ready to purchase a VPN and wondering which protocol is the best? Very often, vpn service provider are offering 3 protocols. We tell you in this guide the difference between each of them (PPTP/L2TP/IPsec/OpenVPN).
PPTP VPN Protocol
Compatibility: A large choice of device is supported, workstation, laptop, mobile phone, ipad, android device and tablets.
Suported OS: Windows, Mac osX, ioS, Android, Linux, DD-WRT.
Encryption Level: 128-bit
Security Level: Basic encryption
Stability: Accepted by most of public wifi, most of university and work network, high stability.
Installation: Easy to install, protocol included in most of operating system
Speed: Very fast cause of the lower encryption level.
Ports: Limited choice
L2TP and IPsec VPN Protocol
Compatibility: A large choice of device is supported, workstation, laptop, mobile phone, ipad, android device and tablets.
Suported OS: Windows, Mac osX, ioS, Android, Linux
Encryption Level: 256-bit
Security Level: High level of data encryption, including double encapsulation of the data.
Stability: The stability is very high if your network supports NAT (network address translation).
Installation: Requires some advanced configuration and setup.
Speed: Slower cause the encryption requires cpu power.
Ports: More option available that the PPTP protocol.
Open VPN Protocol
Compatibility: Most of workstation, laptop computer supports Open Vpn.
Suported OS: Windows, Mac osX and Linux.
Encryption Level: 160 bits or 256 bits depending of the option your choose.
Security Level: The highest level, no vulnerabilities currently know, digital certificates needed for authentication on both side (client / server)
Stability: The most stable protocol
Installation: Easy to install, protocol included in most of operating system
Speed: The fastest vpn protocol.
Ports: Works on every ports. Impossible to detect and block.
SSTP VPN Protocol
Compatibility: Most of workstation, laptop computer supports SSTP.
Suported OS: Windows, Mac osX and Linux.
Encryption Level: 256 bits.
Security Level: Very high level, no vulnerabilities currently know.
Stability: Very stable protocol
Installation: Easy to install.
Speed: Very fast vpn protocol.
Ports: Works on many ports. Difficult to detect and block.