1PPTP(8)                     System Manager's Manual                    PPTP(8)
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NAME

6       pptp - PPTP driver
7

SYNOPSIS

9       pptp <pptp-server-IP> <pptp-options> [ppp-options] ...
10

DESCRIPTION

12       pptp  establishes  the  client  side of a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
13       using the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).  Use  this  program
14       to  connect  to  an  employer's PPTP based VPN, or to certain cable and
15       ADSL service providers.
16
17       By default, pptp establishes the PPTP call to the PPTP server, and then
18       starts  an instance of pppd to manage the data transfer.  However, pptp
19       can also be run as a connection manager within pppd.
20

OPTIONS

22       The first non-option argument on the pptp command line must be the host
23       name or IP address of the PPTP server.
24
25       All  long options (starting with "--") are interpreted as pptp options,
26       and a fatal error occurs if an unrecognised option is used.
27
28       All command-line arguments which do not start with "-" are  interpreted
29       as  ppp  options,  and  passed  as  is to pppd unless --nolaunchpppd is
30       given.
31
32       --phone <number>
33              Pass <number> to remote host as phone number
34
35       --nolaunchpppd
36              Do not launch pppd but use stdin as the network connection.  Use
37              this flag when including pptp as a pppd connection process using
38              the pty option.  See EXAMPLES.
39
40       --quirks <quirk>
41              Work around a buggy PPTP  implementation,  adopts  special  case
42              handling for particular PPTP servers and ADSL modems.  Currently
43              recognised values are BEZEQ_ISRAEL only
44
45       --debug
46              Run in foreground (for debugging with gdb)
47
48       --sync Enable Synchronous HDLC (pppd must use it too)
49
50       --timeout <secs>
51              Time to wait for reordered packets (0.01 to 10 secs)
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53       --nobuffer
54              Completely disables buffering and reordering  of  packets.   Any
55              --timeout specified will be ignored.
56
57       --idle-wait <secs>
58              Time  to  wait before sending a control connection echo request.
59              The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.
60
61       --max-echo-wait <secs>
62              Time to wait for an echo reply before closing the  control  con‐
63              nection.  The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.
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65       --logstring <name>
66              Use <name> instead of 'anon' in syslog messages
67
68       --localbind <addr>
69              Bind to specified IP address instead of wildcard
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71       --loglevel <level>
72              Sets the debugging level (0=low, 1=default, 2=high)
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74
75       --test-type <n>
76              Enable  packet reordering tests that damage the integrity of the
77              packet stream  to  the  server.   Use  this  only  when  testing
78              servers.   Zero  is the default, and means that packets are sent
79              in the correct order.  A value of one (1) causes a  single  swap
80              between two packets, such that the sequence numbers might be 1 2
81              3 4 6 5 7 8 9.  A value of two (2)  causes  ten  packets  to  be
82              buffered,  then  sent  out of order but ascending, such that the
83              sequence numbers might be 1 2 3 4 16 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13  14  15
84              17  18  19  20.   A  value of three (3) causes ten packets to be
85              buffered, then sent in the reverse order, like this; 1 2 3 4  16
86              15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 17 18 19 20.
87
88
89       --test-rate <n>
90              Sets  the  number of packets to pass before causing a reordering
91              test.  Default is 100.  Has no effect if test-type is zero.  The
92              result of test types 2 and 3 are undefined if this value is less
93              than ten.
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QUIRKS

98       BEZEQ_ISRAEL
99              modifies packets to interoperate with Orckit ADSL modems on  the
100              BEZEQ network in Israel.
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102

EXAMPLES

104       Connection to a Microsoft Windows VPN Server
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106         pppd noauth nobsdcomp nodeflate require-mppe-128 name domain\\\\user‐
107       name remotename PPTP pty "pptp 10.0.0.5 --nolaunchpppd"
108
109       Note that the chap-secrets file used by pppd must include an entry  for
110       domain\\username
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112

STATISTICS

114       The  pptp  process  collects  statistics when sending and receiving GRE
115       packets. They are intended to be useful for debugging poor PPTP perfor‐
116       mance  and  for  general monitoring of link quality. The statistics are
117       cumulative since the pptp process was started.
118
119       The statistics can be viewed by sending a SIGUSR1 signal to  the  "GRE-
120       to-PPP Gateway" process, which will cause it to dump them to the system
121       logs (at the LOG_NOTICE level). A better way to present the  statistics
122       to applications is being sought (e.g. SNMP?).
123
124       The  following  statistics  are collected at the time of writing (April
125       2003):
126
127       rx accepted
128              the number of GRE packets successfully passed to PPP
129
130       rx lost
131              the number of packets never received, and presumed lost  in  the
132              network
133
134       rx under win
135              the  number of packets which were duplicates or had old sequence
136              numbers (this might be caused by a packet-reordering network  if
137              your reordering timeout is set too low)
138
139       rx over win
140              the  number  of packets which were too far ahead in the sequence
141              to be reordered (might be caused by loss of more than 300  pack‐
142              ets in a row)
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144       rx buffered
145              the number of packets which were slightly ahead of sequence, and
146              were either buffered for reordering, or  if  buffering  is  dis‐
147              abled, accepted immediately (resulting in the intermediate pack‐
148              ets being discarded).
149
150       rx OS errors
151              the number of times where the operating system reported an error
152              when we tried to read a packet
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154       rx truncated
155              the  number of times we received a packet which was shorter than
156              the length implied by the GRE header
157
158       rx invalid
159              the number of times we received a packet which  had  invalid  or
160              unsupported  flags  set  in  the header, wrong version, or wrong
161              protocol.
162
163       rx acks
164              the number of pure acknowledgements received (without data). Too
165              many  of these will waste bandwidth, and might be solved by tun‐
166              ing the remote host.
167
168       tx sent
169              the number of GRE packets sent with data
170
171       tx failed
172              the number of packets we tried to send, but the OS  reported  an
173              error
174
175       tx short
176              the  number  of  times  the OS would not let us write a complete
177              packet
178
179       tx acks
180              the number of times we sent a pure ack, without data
181
182       tx oversize
183              the number of times we couldn't send a  packet  because  it  was
184              over PACKET_MAX bytes long
185
186       round trip
187              the estimated round-trip time in milliseconds
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189

SEE ALSO

191       pppd(8)
192
193       Documentation in /usr/share/doc/pptp
194

AUTHOR

196       This  manual  page  was written by James Cameron <james.cameron@hp.com>
197       from text contributed by Thomas  Quinot  <thomas@debian.org>,  for  the
198       Debian  GNU/Linux  system.  The description of the available statistics
199       was written by Chris Wilson <chris@netservers.co.uk>. Updates  for  the
200       Debian distribution by Ola Lundqvist <opal@debian.org>.
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204                                                                       PPTP(8)
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