VPN Tunneling: An Untraceable Firewall

If you thought about encrypted internet surfing, then VPN tunnelling is the first thing that will come to your mind. VPN supports hiding your IP address and your physical location at the time of encrypting the internet traffic. VPN or Virtual Private Network service is gradually increasing its popularity. The VPN tunnelling generates a channel between you and the internet; the encrypted internet connection will help you maintain your internet surfing confidentiality from hackers and ISPs. Even the government will not be able to know the information about your internet surfing.

If you are still unaware of the facts that are associated with VPN tunnels and their services, then you must go through this article. Here you will gain comprehensive knowledge regarding VPN tunnelling. Furthermore, if you are confused about choosing a suitable VPN tunnelling protocol, this article will help you choose the correct one. So let's not exaggerate anymore; let's know the detailed facts about VPN tunnelling.

What is VPN tunnelling?

A VPN establishes a secured connection between you and the internet and encrypts the data packets that are served by your device. The VPN tunnel supports connecting several devices like computers, smartphones, tablets, etc., with different networks. It helps hide the IP address and the data packets generated by your system during internet surfing.

VPN tunnelling is a procedure of encrypting that serves to differentiate data from the other internet traffic. It helps to maintain data confidentiality and data integrity while it is travelling over the public network.

Difference between VPN and VPN tunnelling

However, if you think the definition of VPN and Tunnelling is the same, you are wrong. Virtual Network Protocol is a point-to-point connection that utilizes the internet to transport data mechanisms for two sites.

On the other side, VPN tunnelling enables the encapsulation of a data packet from different types of protocols through the support of a datagram or packet. A VPN tunnel is a secured link between your device (computer/mobile phone) and an outside network. A virtual private network tunnel (VPN tunnel) can be used to conceal your online activities.

A VPN tunnel connects your phones, laptops or computers to different networks where your original IP address is hidden. So when surfing the web, you will be anonymous, and data will be encrypted.

Using a VPN tunnel when connecting to websites keeps your data safe from hackers, governments, and other snoopers from tracking your activities and viewing your IP address.

How does tunnelling work?

Before getting into VPN tunnelling, you will need to sign up for a VPN service. After setting up your VPN, you can continue surfing the web. 

Now instead of you directly accessing other websites using your IP address, you will use the VPN provider's IP address. These connections are encrypted, meaning that all data transfers are secured. In addition, your internet service provider (ISP) will no longer see your IP address; instead, they’ll see your VPN provider's IP, helping to protect your privacy.

Visiting sites, clicking on links, or downloading files from sites will no longer be traced back to you. The VPN provider builds a tunnel around your online activity, providing a protective coating between you and everyone else.

While hiding your IP address, VPN providers also encrypt all the data. So if a third party intercepts your data, they will not be able to make sense of it because it’s encrypted and cannot decipher it.

The combination of hiding your IP address and encrypting the data will keep your online activities anonymous and secured. Hackers, businesses, and governments will no longer be able to track your online activity, files your download or videos you stream.

What is split tunnelling?

While a VPN provides full anonymity and security, sometimes you will need to access the local websites. Split tunnelling enables you to route some of your online activities through a VPN tunnel while accessing others through your ISP.

Not everything we do needs to pass through a VPN. For example, you want to do online banking while using a VPN. Accessing the bank via a different location (due to the change of IP address) could be flagged as suspicious activity.

Split tunnelling lets you gain access to web services to use a VPN or use the local ISP. Split tunnelling will conserve bandwidth as the complete internet traffic doesn’t have to pass through the VPN servers.

Types of VPN tunnelling protocols

After getting a clear conception of VPN tunnelling now, you should know the types of VPN tunnelling protocols. You can find various VPN protocols in the market while offering different features. The features depend on the security level. However, here we will discuss four different types of VPN protocols maintained by the VPN industries. So, let's have a look at it. 

PPTP

PPTP, or Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol, is considered the most conventional protocol of VPN. Microsoft developed the PPTP protocol of VPN. When this VPN protocol was released, it was supported by Windows 95. The PPTP VPN protocol serves the data encryption method with data packets. It transmits the data packets through a tunnel to develop the network connection.

The PPTP is considered the easiest VPN protocol. You need to enter your username and password to connect to the server. It is also considered the fastest VPN protocol. The low level of encryption helps this protocol to become the fastest one. On the other hand, PPTP is considered the least secure VPN protocol due to the speedy services and stumpy encryption.

L2TP/ IPSec

L2TP or Layer 2 Tunnelling protocol is mainly utilized in conjunction with the Internet Protocol Security or IPSec. It will help you to develop an effective, secure tunnelling protocol. If you are going to compare it with PPTP, then as per our suggestion, L2TP is the better one. The L2TP also encapsulates your data but encrypts it only after completing the IPSec wraps. The L2TP provides two layers of encryption, which is considered as another effectiveness of the L2TP tunnelling protocol. The two-layer encryption system supports maintaining your data packets' privacy while passing through the tunnel. L2TP/ IPSec also serves AES-256 bits of encryption. Therefore, it is considered the most superior encryption system.

Though, you might face some trouble while utilizing the L2TP VPN tunnel due to some restrictions with the firewall. The fixed ports of the firewall may generate several issues. However, if you are in search of a user-friendly VPN tunnelling protocol, then L2TP is suitable for you. The double-layered encryption service enhances the security level of your data transmission, therefore according to our opinion, L2TP can be considered as one of the best types of VPN protocol tunnelling.

SSTP

SSTP or Secure Socket Tunnelling Protocol is a type of VPN tunnelling that continues the internet data transmission through SSL or Secured Socket Layer. If you are a Windows user, accessing Secure Socket Tunnelling Protocol suits you. The support of SSTP enhances the security level of the SSL VPN tunnelling protocol. Temporary firewall ports support this protocol; therefore it is considered less trouble maker than L2TP.

The SSTP VPN tunnelling is also utilized in Transport Layer Security or TLS conjunction in the web browsers. It provides some extra layer to secure your web browsing activities. Therefore, it secures the internet connection with the device. If you find any website link that begins with "HTTPS" as an alternative to "HTTP", then you must be sure that it is secured with SSTP VPN tunnelling.

However, This VPN tunnelling protocol does not apply to you if you use an operating system other than the Windows operating system. If you are a Windows user, then you can obtain this. This VPN tunnelling protocol does not audit independently for building potential backdoors.

Open VPN

Open VPN tunnelling protocol applies AES 256 encryption bit for securing your data packets. This VPN tunnelling protocol serves open sources. The security community examines the code regularly; this helps to figure out the security glitches of this VPN tunnelling protocol.

You can obtain this VPN protocol from any kind of operating systems such as Android, Windows, Mac, and iOS. You can set up this VPN protocol with any third-party software. The configuration system of this VPN protocol is tough to set up. The support of a strong cryptographic algorithm supports the Open VPN tunnel to enhance the internet data security level. It also supports speeding up the firewall connection. Therefore, per our analysis, the Open VPN tunnel is the best type of tunnel tunnelling.

Which VPN tunnelling protocol to choose?

Here are some checklists that can help you to choose a good VPN tunnel. The privacy level of a VPN tunnel is the first and foremost thing that you must check before selecting your VPN tunnel. Before using a VPN tunnel you must check out the speed of the VPN tunnelling. Therefore, you must check the cost-effectiveness of the VPN provider; you can find many free VPN service providers, though we will suggest you choose a paid service provider within your budget. It will help you to obtain a better service.

However, according to the entire analysis here, we have shortlisted some VPN tunnel protocols that can be beneficial for you. As per the analysis, PPTP can be considered as one of the best VPN tunnelling protocols. It can be considered a least secured VPN tunnel protocol due to the stumpy encryption server. So, we will suggest you avoid PPTP.

If you want secure VPN tunnelling for your Windows operating system, then you can choose L2TP/ IPSec. However, as we have mentioned, you can face different issues due to the firewall ports; therefore, we will not suggest you choose this VPN tunnelling.

If you are operating iOS or any other operating system other than Windows, then SSTP VPN is not for you. However, we will suggest you use Open VPN tunnelling. You can use this VPN tunnelling from any operating system. Therefore, as per the discussion, it came to know that it is enriched with the required specifications. Therefore, we will suggest you choose the Open VPN protocol.

Conclusion

However, we hope now you have a clear conception of VPN tunnelling. The article has discussed the differences between VPN and VPN tunnelling. If you want to choose your VPN protocol, you must know about the types of VPN protocol. However, we hope this article has helped you to know the details of VPN protocol types. If you are going to choose your VPN, you must adhere to the checklist provided in this article. It will help you to choose the perfect one for you. 

According to the entire discussion, we can state the concluding word while saying that the OpenVPN is the best VPN protocol type. Thereafter, we hope this article was informative enough to know the facts of the VPN tunnelling service.