GRE vs L2TP

GRE and L2TP are 2 commonly referred Tunnelling protocols and may be confused at times. While GRE is abbreviation for Generic Routing Encapsulation, L2TP stands for Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol. Neither of these protocols encrypt traffic to provide protection for the data being tunnelled. Furthermore, If we want to protect the traffic, then IPsec needs to be run over L2TP or GRE.  While GRE ip tunnel is used to carry “other” type of traffic, L2TP is used for multiplexing of multiple PPP sessions between two IP endpoints. L2TP was derived from Microsoft’s Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) and Cisco’s Layer 2 Forwarding (L2F) technology

Below table details on differences between GRE and L2TP –

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rashmi Bhardwaj

Founder of AAR TECHNOSOLUTIONS, Rashmi is an evangelist for IT and technology. With more than 12 years in the IT ecosystem, she has been supporting multi domain functions across IT & consultancy services, in addition to Technical content making.

You can learn more about her on her linkedin profile – Rashmi Bhardwaj