Tunneling protocol
A tunneling protocol is a network protocol which encapsulates one protocol or session inside another. Protocol A is encapsulated within protocol B, such that A treats B as though it were a data link layer. Tunneling is used to get data between administrative domains which use a protocol that is not supported by the internet connecting those domains.
Examples include:
Datagram-based:
- L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol)
- MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching)
- GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation)
- PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol)
- PPPoE (point-to-point protocol over Ethernet)
- PPPoA (point-to-point protocol over ATM)
- IP in IP Tunneling (RFC 1853)
- IPsec
- IEEE 802.1Q (Ethernet VLANs)
- DLSw (SNA over IP)
- XOT (X.25 datagrams over a TCP)
- 6to4 (IPv6 over IPv4 as protocol 41)
- Teredo (IPv6 over UDP over IPv4)
Stream-based:
References
- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.