Classificação dos protocolos de VPN quanto à largura de banda no sistema routeros

Abstract

In order to allow data traffic between computer networks in a safe and reliable way, the usage of virtual tunnels is indispensable. Founded in 1996, the Latvian network equipment manufacturer Mikrotik has a vast portfolio of affordable routers that run their proprietary operating system RouterOS, being a prominent choice for small and medium businesses in the Brazilian market. The Mikrotik RouterOS operating system supports several VPN protocols which it can operate as a client and/or server. Those protocols allow establishing a VPN tunnel between equipments from the same or different manufacturers. Among the existing protocols, the following were selected: PPTP, SSTP, L2TP and OpenVPN. In this paper, the VPN protocols which are available in RouterOS were tested using the iPerf IP traffic generator utility through the established VPN connection in a closed environment with fixed equipment, in order to classify their performance by the maximum bandwidth achieved. After a comparative analysis, it was possible to verify that the L2TP protocol has the best performance based on total bandwidth. Other factors may be relevant such as packet encryption, so it is necessary to classify which VPN protocol best suits each network scenario, taking into account the network requirements.