Please L2TP+IPsec vs SSL VPN

[news2010a]

Hi,

Anyone here has ever seen L2TP in action? I was told by someone that L2TP should not cause as many issues behind NAT, etc. Is that true? If so, I am wondering how come I never heard many people using it.

Some people suggested that we should adopt L2TP+IPSec (we have Windows clients) instead for adopting an SSL VPN solution. If you can give me the cons of this that would be great.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk827/tk369/technologies_q_and_a_item09186a00800a443e.shtml

[kerek]

Hi,

The VPN method to be choosen is fairly depends what you want to achieve.

The SSL VPN is slightly different from IPSec (with or without L2TP) VPN as it is working on application layer instead of network layer. There are few types of that from the client point of view. The question is again what you want to achive (full netwrok access or just few internal IP/port or just HTTP server on the LAN etc.). L2TP is mainly used on the access infrastructure such as xDSL or with dial technology. In respect to Windows I have seen such problem when the client is behind NAT the IPSec tunnel was unable to build up, because the built in IPSec client of Windows XP is only capable to run in transport mode where the NAT is not possible. If you use for instance Cisco VPN client the NAT is not problem.

Hope it helps, rate if does

Krisztian