PPP is a data link protocol commonly used to establish a direct connection between two networking nodes. It provides authentication, encryption, and compression. PPP was developed to overcome deficiencies of the earlier SLIP protocol, such as lack of error detection and support only for IP. PPP uses Link Control Protocol (LCP) to establish and configure the link, Network Control Protocol (NCP) for dynamic IP address assignment, and authentication protocols like PAP and CHAP. It transmits data in frames that use flags to indicate start/end and a protocol field to identify the encapsulated protocol. PPP establishes the link through a sequence of configure requests and acknowledges, and can then transmit IP data packets before terminating the connection.