GRE tunnel

What is GRE tunnel. What is the difference between gre tunnel and ipsec.

GRE has the advantage over IPSec of being more generic, in the sense that it can encapsulate a wide variety of protocol packet types inside IP tunnels for example, using Novell IPX or load balancing between sites.

On the other hand IPSec is more secure, the packets are encrypted, the peers can authenticate to each other. The following might shed more light:

searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/tip/0...0_gci1355896,00.html

Stealing that link from you solo.

GRE (...) can encapsulate a wide variety of protocol packet types inside IP tunnels for example, using Novell IPX (...)

On the other hand IPSec is more secure, the packets are encrypted, the peers can authenticate to each other. (...)

You can even combine GRE and IPSec. If you want to encrypt an IPX flow between two sites, you have to put the IPX in a GRE tunnel and then to encrypt the GRE within an IPSec tunnel... It makes lots of overhead but it is secure

Thanks for the add krik,

And I almost forgot that we have a complete IPsec article, here: www.firewall.cx/ipsec.php

GRE (...) can encapsulate a wide variety of protocol packet types inside IP tunnels for example, using Novell IPX (...)

On the other hand IPSec is more secure, the packets are encrypted, the peers can authenticate to each other. (...)

You can even combine GRE and IPSec. If you want to encrypt an IPX flow between two sites, you have to put the IPX in a GRE tunnel and then to encrypt the GRE within an IPSec tunnel... It makes lots of overhead but it is secure

Isn't it supposed to be a GRE tunnel over an IPSec tunnel. The routing info from GRE is needed to get the data to it's destination, right?