

GRE tunnels greatly simply the configuration and administration of VPN tunnels and are covered in our Configuring Point-to-Point GRE VPN Tunnels article. IPSec VPN tunnels can also be configured using GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) Tunnels with IPsec. Readers interested in configuring support for dynamic public IP address endpoint routers can refer to our Configuring Site to Site IPSec VPN with Dynamic IP Endpoint Cisco Routers article.

In this article we assume both Cisco routers have a static public IP address. This article will show how to setup and configure two Cisco routers to create a permanent secure site-to-site VPN tunnel over the Internet, using the IP Security (IPSec) protocol. The VPN tunnel is created over the Internet public network and encrypted using a number of advanced encryption algorithms to provide confidentiality of the data transmitted between the two sites. Site-to-Site IPSec VPN Tunnels are used to allow the secure transmission of data, voice and video between two sites (e.g offices or branches).
