The main difference between PPTP and L2TP is that L2TP is more secure than PPTP. This is because L2TP uses stronger encryption and certificates for authentication. In contrast, PPTP provides weaker security but offers a faster connection speed.
What’s the Difference Between PPTP and L2TP?
PPTP and L2TP are two popular tunneling protocols supported by almost all VPNs. They allow users to remotely access a network. PPTP is old and less secure but faster and simpler than L2TP. Unfortunately, PPTP comes with many security vulnerabilities, which generally makes it the worse choice as long as you care about security (and you should).
For more differences between PPTP and L2TP, refer to the PPTP vs. L2TP table.
Note that L2TP has no encryption capabilities on its own. As a result, it is often combined with IPSec. So, some of the differences include the differences between PPTP and L2TP/IPSec.
| PPTP | L2TP |
| Short for Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol. | Abbreviation of Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol. |
| Defined in RFC-2637. | Described in RFC-3931. |
| PPTP uses TCP and GRE as transport protocol. | L2TP uses TCP or UDP (when paired with IPSec) as the transport protocol. |
| PPTP separates control and data streams, which makes it less efficient than L2TP. | L2TP combines control and data streams, making it more efficient than PPTP. |
| PPTP is less secure and has many security vulnerabilities. | L2TP is more secure because it requires certificates for authentication, and performs double encapsulation and integrity checks. |
| PPTP relies on MSCHAPv2, which, due to low complexity, can be brute-forced fast. | L2TP is often combined with IPSec to provide end-to-end encryption, ensure data integrity and protect against replay attacks. |
| MSCHAPv2 can be swapped to EAP-TLS. But configuring EAP-TLS on PPTP might be more difficult, i.e., you can use certificates with PPTP if you enforce EAP-TLS authentication, but that requires both client-side and server-side certificates and complicated configuration. | Configuring L2TP is easy. Combining it with IPSec adds highly secure authentication and encryption capabilities. |
| PPTP is easy to use, simple, and faster than L2TP. | L2TP uses more CPU resources than PPTP, which makes it slower than PPTP. |
| PPTP has low overhead and is cost-effective. | L2TP has a higher overhead than PPTP because the more secure encryption makes it perform slower. |
| PPTP does not require Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). | L2TP uses Public-Key Infrastructure in the form of digital certificates. |
| PPTP uses 128-bit encryption. | L2TP uses 256-bit encryption. |
| PPTP has performance issues on unstable networks. | L2TP offers excellent and steady performance on unstable networks. |
| PPTP is less firewall-friendly. | L2TP is more firewall-friendly because most firewalls do not support GRE. |
Advantages of L2TP over PPTP
- L2TP is more secure than PPTP thanks to stronger encryption and digital certificates.
- L2TP is more stable than L2TP, which is vital if achieving steady performance on unstable networks is a requirement.
- L2TP is easy to configure while still maintaining high security. Even though PPTP is easy to configure, making it secure requires additional, burdensome configuration.
Advantages of PPTP over L2TP
- PPTP provides a faster connection speed than L2TP because its encryption is low-level.
- PPTP comes built-in with many Windows operating systems.
- PPTP is faster and easier to deploy than L2TP/IPSec because it is not based on Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) and therefore does not require digital certificates.
Summary of PPTP vs. L2TP
While PPTP is easy to configure and fast, L2TP is much more secure. As a result, L2TP is the better choice between these two protocols. Nevertheless, when thinking about security and performance, you should consider using the OpenVPN tunneling protocol.
