L2TP for Ubuntu 16.10 instead of PPTP

I had installed and setup a Virtual Machine using Virtual Box for testing networking equipment. Much to my dismay I quickly found out that by default, a vanilla install only supported PPTP (less secure) and did not have an L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) client.

Why in the world? I have no idea. I didn’t think that many people still even used PPTP. Either way, after some quick searching, I discovered the following package which supports IPSec in Gnome on Ubuntu 16.10.

https://launchpad.net/~nm-l2tp/+archive/ubuntu/network-manager-l2tp

To quickly get setup:

  1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nm-l2tp/network-manager-l2tp
  2. sudo apt-get update
  3. sudo apt install network-manager-l2tp-gnome

Once installed, to add your VPN:

  1. Right click on the networking icon
  2. Select Edit Connections
  3. Add Button
  4. Choose L2TP from the Dropdown
  5. Enter the VPN information
  6. Enjoy!