VPN Tunneling Protocol Names Pronunciation

WireGuard is pronounced 'WYR-gard' — 'wire' plus 'guard', both plain English words. In a technical interview: "WireGuard's tiny codebase made it far easier to audit than the older tunneling protocols it replaced."

OpenVPN is pronounced 'OH-pen VEE-PEE-EN' — 'open' said plainly, plus 'V', 'P', 'N' spoken as letters. In a technical interview: "OpenVPN ran over a standard UDP port, so it slipped past most restrictive firewalls without extra configuration."

IPsec is pronounced 'EYE-PEE-sek' — the letters 'I' and 'P' spoken individually, plus 'sec' short for security. In a technical interview: "IPsec encrypted the traffic at the network layer, so every application on the connection was protected automatically."

IKEv2 is pronounced 'EYE-KEE VEE-TOO' — 'IKE' said as one syllable, plus 'version two' shortened to 'V-two'. In a technical interview: "IKEv2 reconnected the VPN tunnel almost instantly after the phone switched from Wi-Fi to mobile data."

L2TP is pronounced 'EL-TOO-TEE-PEE' — 'L' spoken as a letter, plus 'two', then 'T' and 'P' spoken as letters. In a technical interview: "L2TP alone provided no encryption at all, which is why it was almost always paired with IPsec."