Network+ – 11/17/2008

Remotely accessing clients and servers was the discussion topic today.  We covered different connection mediums (PSTN, ISDN and T-carrier lines) first, and then looked at some protocols that assist us in the connection to various servers.

Some of the protocols we covered include:

SLIP – Serial Line Internet Protocol – This is a really old protocol designed to allow us to move IP traffic over our serial ports, typically to an external modem.

PPP – Point-to-Point protocol – PPP is newer in that in gives us some options, namely authentication, encryption and compression.

PPTP – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol – Similar to PPP but creates a “tunnel” between two routers on the Internet.

L2TP – Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol – “Layer 2″ refers to OSI Model Layer 2, and that indicates that very little data processing is being done to the packet as its being sent.  Used with the IPSec encryption scheme, this is a very secure method of VPN communication.

After this discussion, we configured RDP on our own computers, and then to close the class, we watched as I screwed around with a poor, unsuspecting student using a computer in another class via VNC.  (My preferred version is RealVNC.

Homework:

• Chapter 7: Review Questions