The Pptp Alg; Pptp Alg Usage - D-Link DFL-260E User Manual

6.2.7. The PPTP ALG

6.2.7. The PPTP ALG
Why the PPTP ALG is Needed
The PPTP ALG is provided to deal with a specific issue when PPTP tunnels are used with NAT.
Let us suppose we have two clients A and B on a protected inner network behind a NetDefend
Firewall. The firewall is connected to the external Internet and a NAT rule is defined to allow traffic
from the clients to flow to the Internet. Both clients will therefore appear to have from the same IP
address as they make connections to servers across the Internet.
One client A now establishes a PPTP tunnel to an external host C across the Internet. The tunnel
endpoints are the client and the external server. Because of the NAT IP rule, the tunnel connection
will appear to be coming from the external IP address on the firewall.
This first connection will be successful but when the second client B also tries to connect to the
same server C at the same endpoint IP address, the first connection for A will be lost. The reason is
that both clients are trying to establish a PPTP tunnel from the same external IP address to the same
endpoint.
The PPTP ALG solves this problem. By using the ALG, the traffic from all the clients can be
multiplexed through a single PPTP tunnel between the firewall and the server.
PPTP ALG Setup
Setting up the PPTP ALG is similar to the set up of other ALG types. The ALG object must be
associated with the relevant service and the service is then associated with an IP rule. The full
sequence of steps for setup is as follows:
• Define a new PPTP ALG object with an appropriate name, for example pptp_alg. The full list of
options for the ALG are listed towards the end of this section.
• Associate the new ALG object with an appropriate Service object. The predefined service called
can be dropped or just logged. This feature is common to a
number of ALGs and is described fully in Section 6.4,
"Anti-Virus Scanning".
Figure 6.6. PPTP ALG Usage
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Chapter 6. Security Mechanisms