What VPN protocol should I use?
The age old question when it comes to using a VPN is “What protocol should I use?” and that is the correct question to ask. There is no catch all protocol for everyone, everyone has their own needs. Hopefully this article and shed some light on what is best for you.
We offer the choice between PPTP, L2TP, SSTP, OpenVPN and the new player SoftEther. Don’t worry if you are a little overwhelmed by the acronyms and what have you, I will break down which protocols are good for what.
PPTP
Starting with PPTP, this is seen as the bog standard and very easily accessible protocol (including native support in Windows). It is something that is easy to set up and doesn’t affect your internet speed by much but that of course comes with its own set of disadvantages. PPTP offers at most 128bit MPPE encryption, this is rather low compared to its competitors. This lowers the overhead though meaning it is really good if you are using it a lot for media streaming.
L2TP
L2TP is arguably a better choice in that regard though. It may be slightly slower overall but with encryption from AES 128bit all the way to 256bit you gain that extra little bit of privacy, that I think is worth the slight speed loss that may occur. Once again L2TP is available on a very wide range of platforms and natively in Windows.
SSTP
SSTP is a great protocol to use if security is of the utmost priority offering 256bit AES encryption and 2048bit key certificates; as mentioned above, that does come with the disadvantage of slower speeds. It has great integration with Windows but therein lies its biggest detractor in the fact that SSTP is ONLY available on Windows, meaning those not running it or want it for Android or iOS are out of luck.
OpenVPN and SoftEther
That leads me to OpenVPN and SoftEther. They are the multiplatform alternatives to SSTP. They offer the same kind of rigid security but with the added benefit of being available on many different platforms. I would recommend SoftEther over OpenVPN to less experienced users due to the user friendly GUI, it also has a lot to offer more advanced users too. OpenVPN lacks that GUI and relies on config files making it a little less accessible. This also applies to the Android version of the OpenVPN app, it can be quite fiddly getting the config files in place. OpenVPN and SoftEther are both really solid options and it is worth giving both a try. I have found speed loss to have less of an impact with the likes of SoftEther though.
Bottom Line
To summarize, PPTP and L2TP are aimed towards those that want a simple VPN experience that doesn’t impact their usual browsing too much, these two protocols are very simple to set up on mobile devices too. SSTP, OpenVPN and SoftEther are great for those that require the best security from their VPN.
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