Review Request: pptp

Paul Howarth paul at city-fan.org
Tue May 10 13:11:37 UTC 2005


Chris Ricker wrote:
> On Tue, 10 May 2005, Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
> 
>>Summary:
>>Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) Client
>>
>>Description:
>>Client for the proprietary Microsoft Point-to-Point Tunneling
>>Protocol, PPTP.  Allows connection to a PPTP based VPN as used
>>by employers and some cable and ADSL service providers.
>>
>>Spec file:
>>http://www.city-fan.org/~paul/extras/pptp/pptp.spec
> 
> 
> Spec looks good
> 
> What are your thoughts on MPPE inclusion? Every Microsoft PPTP VPN I've 
> ever seen required that as well.... It may be patent-encumbered though?

Whilst it's possible to set up an MS VPN server not to require MPPE, 
it's not very useful ;-) However, there are applications of PPTP that do 
not require encryption. For instance, I connect to my ADSL ISP using pptp.

Regarding patents, I don't believe that the ppp_mppe module has any 
patent issues, but the alternative ppp_mppe_mppc module does.
See: 
http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/howto-diagnosis.phtml#running_pppd_after_connection

> Packaging of pptpconfig to go with this would be useful too

Well, yes, but that opens another can of worms as I mentioned earlier:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2005-May/msg00394.html

The PHP4 in FC3 doesn't include the pcntl module, and FC4 ships with 
PHP5, which I believe (I haven't tried it) is incompatible with php-gtk.

>>An open source PPTP VPN server is also available, namely PoPToP
>>(http://poptop.sourceforge.net/). I may package this for extras too at a later
>>date if there's demand for it.
> 
> 
> Given the general broken-ness of PPTP, it might be best not to encourage 
> people to persist in furthering the use of it :-)

Unfortunately some of us have no choice if we need to use $EMPLOYER's VPN.

Cheers, Paul.




More information about the fedora-extras-list mailing list