I've never setup a VPN before, but I've been using linux for a while. My network admin says we use IPSEC to connect to the VPN concentrator, and I was reading a little on the VPN-HOWTO on tldp.org, but I kind of got stuck. He said just install the cisco vpn client but its not supported anymore, so I'm kind of shit out of luck on that front.

Is there any documentation on setting up a VPN using IPSEC? How does it differ from tunneling ppp through ssh - is it the same thing? Tunneling ethernet frames using PPP, through SSH over UDP?

Any info would be appreciated, as you can see, I'm totally lost

Try www.freeswan.org ...

It's similar to tunnelling over ssh but different protocols to ssh.

You need a cisco vpn client for linux. Freeswan would be good if you wanted a freeswan IPSEC based linux server. But since you need to connect to a cisco consentrator you need the cisco client.