hello all -

my synchronizer utility has been running just fine for about 4 years
now, but i want to move to a VPN approach for a few reasons.

1) avoid the cost of providing the 800 phone number
2) many of my users NOW have fast internet access on their LAN
3) makes it easier to support simultaneous processing.

(current server is NT4.0 with IIS)

the client program controls the entire process and does the following
steps:

1) establishes a DUN & RPC & FTP connections to server
2) invokes some RPC object methods on server to confirm security rights
3) extracts new and modified records from local database tables (partial
   replica) into local "transaction" tables.
4) uses Mabry FTP control to transfer these "transaction" tables to FTP
   directory on server
5) invokes RPC object methods on server to add & update  (new & modified
   records transaction) to the server central database.
6) invokes RPC object methods on server to re-extract the entire
   partial replica (for that particular client).  (this new replica
   will contain additional data that came from  other sources).
7) uses Mabry FTP control to transfer those tables from server to client
8) break down the RPC & DUN & FTP connections.  (i.e. disconnect)

my questions are:

1) is it possible to programmatically establish a VPN connection using VFP6?
2) is it possible to FTP or equivalent over VPN connection ?
3) what would be the general approach to do this same functionality using VPN
4) can you recommend any particular tools

thanks for any advice -
patrick