Our company is looking to change from frame relay to VPN between two locations within the same country. Can this happen, and what type of VPN would we need for that?

Replacing frame relay with a VPN usually means rerouting the existing frame relay traffic securely over the Internet. The existing network traffic, the existing network infrastructure and the network services available at each location strongly influence the implementation choices.

Take an inventory of the existing frame relay network traffic types. Once the collection of protocols, application types and usage patterns is understood, you can engineer a solution to meet the requirements. VPNs supporting large-volume server-to-server applications, and possibly SNA mainframe traffic, often require hardware products beyond the LAN VPN services mobile users need.

Router-to-router products commonly are used between static locations. Cisco, Linksys, Nortel and others provide Internet tunneling, security, encryption and VPN routing capabilities to meet most station-to-station VPN needs.

Go to www.freeswan.org for information on building secure WAN connections over the Internet using Linux - your Microsoft manual describes how to build VPNs with Windows servers.