pptp(8)


NAME

   pptp - PPTP driver

SYNOPSIS

   pptp <pptp-server-IP> <pptp-options> [ppp-options] ...

DESCRIPTION

   pptp  establishes  the  client  side of a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
   using the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).  Use  this  program
   to  connect  to  an  employer's PPTP based VPN, or to certain cable and
   ADSL service providers.

   By default, pptp establishes the PPTP call to the PPTP server, and then
   starts  an instance of pppd to manage the data transfer.  However, pptp
   can also be run as a connection manager within pppd.

OPTIONS

   The first non-option argument on the pptp command line must be the host
   name or IP address of the PPTP server.

   All  long options (starting with "--") are interpreted as pptp options,
   and a fatal error occurs if an unrecognised option is used.

   All command-line arguments which do not start with "-" are  interpreted
   as  ppp  options,  and  passed  as  is to pppd unless --nolaunchpppd is
   given.

   --phone <number>
          Pass <number> to remote host as phone number

   --nolaunchpppd
          Do not launch pppd but use stdin as the network connection.  Use
          this flag when including pptp as a pppd connection process using
          the pty option.  See EXAMPLES.

   --quirks <quirk>
          Work around a buggy PPTP  implementation,  adopts  special  case
          handling for particular PPTP servers and ADSL modems.  Currently
          recognised values are BEZEQ_ISRAEL only

   --debug
          Run in foreground (for debugging with gdb)

   --sync Enable Synchronous HDLC (pppd must use it too)

   --timeout <secs>
          Time to wait for reordered packets (0.01 to 10 secs)

   --nobuffer
          Completely disables buffering and reordering  of  packets.   Any
          --timeout specified will be ignored.

   --idle-wait <secs>
          Time  to  wait before sending a control connection echo request.
          The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.

   --max-echo-wait <secs>
          Time to wait for  an  echo  reply  before  closing  the  control
          connection.  The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.

   --logstring <name>
          Use <name> instead of 'anon' in syslog messages

   --localbind <addr>
          Bind to specified IP address instead of wildcard

   --rtmark <n>
          Use  specified policy routing mark for all packets.  This causes
          both the TCP control connection's packets as  well  as  the  GRE
          packets  to bear the given policy routing / netfilter mark. This
          can be used with ip rule  (from  iproute2)  to  use  a  separate
          routing table for the pptp client.

          (requires root privileges or the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.)

   --nohostroute
          Do  not configure a host route pointing towards the PPTP server.
          (cf. ROUTING below)

   --loglevel <level>
          Sets the debugging level (0=low, 1=default, 2=high)

   --test-type <n>
          Enable packet reordering tests that damage the integrity of  the
          packet  stream  to  the  server.   Use  this  only  when testing
          servers.  Zero is the default, and means that packets  are  sent
          in  the  correct order.  A value of one (1) causes a single swap
          between two packets, such that the sequence numbers might be 1 2
          3  4  6  5  7  8 9.  A value of two (2) causes ten packets to be
          buffered, then sent out of order but ascending,  such  that  the
          sequence  numbers  might be 1 2 3 4 16 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
          17 18 19 20.  A value of three (3)  causes  ten  packets  to  be
          buffered,  then sent in the reverse order, like this; 1 2 3 4 16
          15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 17 18 19 20.

   --test-rate <n>
          Sets the number of packets to pass before causing  a  reordering
          test.  Default is 100.  Has no effect if test-type is zero.  The
          result of test types 2 and 3 are undefined if this value is less
          than ten.

ROUTING

   When  PPTP  is  used  in conjunction with a default route on top of the
   tunnel (or just any route encompassing the PPTP server), the  mechanics
   of  routing  would  cause the PPTP packets themselves to be routed over
   the tunnel. This would result  in  an  encapsulation  loop,  destroying
   connectivity.

   pptp  by  default works around this by looking up the route towards the
   PPTP server at startup and configures a  host  route  with  that  data.
   This  essentially  "freezes"  routing  for  PPTP packets at the startup
   configuration. This behaviour can be  disabled  with  --nohostroute  if
   undesired (like when using --rtmark to implement policy routing).

   NB: the route added by pptp is currently not deleted at exit!

QUIRKS

   BEZEQ_ISRAEL
          modifies  packets to interoperate with Orckit ADSL modems on the
          BEZEQ network in Israel.

EXAMPLES

   Connection to a Microsoft Windows VPN Server

      pppd    noauth    nobsdcomp    nodeflate    require-mppe-128    name
   domain\\\\username remotename PPTP pty "pptp 10.0.0.5 --nolaunchpppd"

   Note  that the chap-secrets file used by pppd must include an entry for
   domain\\username

STATISTICS

   The pptp process collects statistics when  sending  and  receiving  GRE
   packets.  They  are  intended  to  be  useful  for  debugging poor PPTP
   performance and for general monitoring of link quality. The  statistics
   are cumulative since the pptp process was started.

   The  statistics  can be viewed by sending a SIGUSR1 signal to the "GRE-
   to-PPP Gateway" process, which will cause it to dump them to the system
   logs  (at the LOG_NOTICE level). A better way to present the statistics
   to applications is being sought (e.g. SNMP?).

   The following statistics are collected at the time  of  writing  (April
   2003):

   rx accepted
          the number of GRE packets successfully passed to PPP

   rx lost
          the  number  of packets never received, and presumed lost in the
          network

   rx under win
          the number of packets which were duplicates or had old  sequence
          numbers  (this might be caused by a packet-reordering network if
          your reordering timeout is set too low)

   rx over win
          the number of packets which were too far ahead in  the  sequence
          to  be  reordered  (might  be  caused  by  loss of more than 300
          packets in a row)

   rx buffered
          the number of packets which were slightly ahead of sequence, and
          were   either  buffered  for  reordering,  or  if  buffering  is
          disabled, accepted immediately (resulting  in  the  intermediate
          packets being discarded).

   rx OS errors
          the number of times where the operating system reported an error
          when we tried to read a packet

   rx truncated
          the number of times we received a packet which was shorter  than
          the length implied by the GRE header

   rx invalid
          the  number  of  times we received a packet which had invalid or
          unsupported flags set in the header,  wrong  version,  or  wrong
          protocol.

   rx acks
          the number of pure acknowledgements received (without data). Too
          many of these will waste  bandwidth,  and  might  be  solved  by
          tuning the remote host.

   tx sent
          the number of GRE packets sent with data

   tx failed
          the  number  of packets we tried to send, but the OS reported an
          error

   tx short
          the number of times the OS would not let  us  write  a  complete
          packet

   tx acks
          the number of times we sent a pure ack, without data

   tx oversize
          the  number  of  times  we couldn't send a packet because it was
          over PACKET_MAX bytes long

   round trip
          the estimated round-trip time in milliseconds

SEE ALSO

   pppd(8)

   Documentation in /usr/share/doc/pptp-linux

AUTHOR

   This manual page was written by  James  Cameron  <james.cameron@hp.com>
   from  text  contributed  by  Thomas Quinot <thomas@debian.org>, for the
   Debian GNU/Linux system.  The description of the  available  statistics
   was  written  by Chris Wilson <chris@netservers.co.uk>. Updates for the
   Debian distribution by Ola Lundqvist <opal@debian.org>.

                                                                   PPTP(8)





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