PPTP vs. openVPN

79wjd · July 6, 2016

What's the difference/benefits of these two VPN services? Is there any reason to choose one over the other?

My router has both of them as options and I originally had gotten openVPN to work with a bit of hackery, but I'm wondering if pptp might be easier to get working and/or more stable since openVPN had issues due to being an outdated version.

tt2468 · July 7, 2016

7 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

What's the difference/benefits of these two VPN services? Is there any reason to choose one over the other?

My router has both of them as options and I originally had gotten openVPN to work with a bit of hackery, but I'm wondering if pptp might be easier to get working and/or more stable since openVPN had issues due to being an outdated version.

PPTP Should NEVER be used, as it is very easy to break the little encryption that it has. PPTP was originally designed by microsoft as a closed source technology, though it has made its way to pretty much any device that at all supports VPN. Microsoft has since ended support for PPTP, as it's pretty much a sack of shit held together by some thread. It's advantages are that it runs at kernel level^{I think}, and has a very simple configuration.

OpenVPN on the other hand, is open-source, so it can be dissected by anyone. This keeps security at a high, as any bugs can be noticed easily. OpenVPN can use an assortment of different crypto technologies that either havn't been broken, or are at least very hard to break. As long as SSL and everything is updated, you have a very secure VPN.

July 7, 2016

PPTP is very easy to setup however as mentioned has some serious security floors and infact most operating systems for both devices and network infrastructure recommend you don't use it.

KuJoe · July 7, 2016

PPTP is easy to setup, widely supported, and has little performance overhead. The encryption is not good though so using it to protect your privacy is not a good idea. It's best used if you don't need encryption (i.e. accessing a trusted remote network from another trusted network, needing to change your IP address/geolocation, etc...). I personally use PPTP regularly because I have no need for encryption but I do need to have specific IPs to access specific servers and I do like to have access to remote networks from home, work, and from my cell phone. Also basically every OS out there supports PPTP out of the box (even iOS and Android).

OpenVPN has better encryption but it can be a pain to setup and is not supported by most OSes by default so it requires additional software. There's also a bigger overhead compared to PPTP so the speed will be slower.

Personally if I need encryption I use L2TP w/IPSEC since it's much easier to setup and more widely supported compared to OpenVPN.