TDS is upgrading me to their new "Fiberville" high speed fiber internet/phone/TV service next week. The challenge for me is that I currently support two VPN connections, one point-to-point for work (I have a home office), the other a client portal so I can connect to my home network from anywhere, etc.

The problem, of course, is that they tell me "it will only work with our router". They supply an Actiontec T2200H, which is a blazingly fast machine, supposedly will move 1Gbps WAN to LAN. I guess it would have to, since the television streams are all done over IP. But it is not a VPN capable router.

The topology of the install is GigE WAN from the ONT into the T2200H. The primary TV box/DVR connects via GigE to any port on the T2200H. For other, wireless, TV boxes they use a proprietary Cisco wireless access point that also connects via GigE to any port on the T2200H. I suspect that both the TV devices are fed via VPN for digital rights management and all that, as I was told that I could not put TV through my existing WAPs to the wireless TV boxes.

I'm guessing that if I provision something nice and fast, like a Ubiquity Edgerouter, in place of the T2200H, that there is really no magic in the T2200H and that the TV boxes will run just fine. And I would then be able to have my VPNs, etc.

Any input from TDS Telecom fiber subscribers, or industry insiders , would be most appreciated, thanks!

The TV is carved into its own VLAN, not a VPN tunnel.  Without the VLAN being configured on the router, you will get no TV.  You also don't know how the edge is terminated it, if it's DHCP then you'll need to clone the MAC of their router to get an address lease.  If it's PPPoE you'll need the PPPoE credentials.

None of that sounds insoluble. I can just let the supplied Actiontec modem do it's thing, forgoing my VPNs for a while, until I analyze its setup, which should not be invisible to me, correct? Then merely copy over its settings onto my router of choice...

It absolutely could be invisible to you, our DSL modem/routers and regular routers we provide for our service have custom firmware.  The interface the customer gets is not the same as what my techs can see, and the customer doesn't get to touch the WAN configuration at all.  Also if by some method the customer does figure out how to change things, or factory resets the modem or router, we have is system that goes through every 10 minutes and looks for non-approved configurations and sets them back the way they should be.  Take my advice, don't be That Guy, if you want to run special sauce change over to a business connection and not a residential or at the very least speak to them and discuss your sauce and its specialness.  They might work with you on it.

So, are you a TDS guy? If so, please PM me with the special sauce!

If not, then as to your suggestion already been there/done that. If it comes down to it, it's literally cheaper for me to go with the residential bundle to get the internet speed I want and continue on with my existing DirecTV service! That's how bad the difference in tariff's are. And, worse, I can only get 50Mb/s as a business customer.

I'm sure I can convince them to leave my phone service on copper. If I can get internet and TV is hosed, I'll still be sort of happy.

This. Things are done like that for a reason. Primarily so customers don't fuck with it. I would be pissed to be called out on a saturday night because some customer decided to change shit and their TV stopped working.

No, I'm not TDS.  But I work in telecommunications/ISP a lot.

Found my answer!

https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX/TDS-IPTV-with-EdgeRouter-Lite/m-p/1494635/highlight/true#M99811

Also found several other good citations in the pfSense and ubnt communities.

Ubiquiti ER-8 is on order. Sadly I'll get it a week after the TDS install, but that's not bad considering it will take me three weeks to figure it out--I know crap-all about CLI

Install was today. It went smooth. Used my existing router, a somewhat elderly but serviceable Netgear Prosafe. It would run 70Mbps on the 100Mbps service. TV guide worked and channels changed but I could not figure out how to get incoming multicast UDP running so TV freezes after about 5 seconds on each channel change. I did check out the ActionTec router they supply. It is shit hot but has no VPN capabilities. I'd happily use it if it had VPN functionality.

Tomorrow the Ubiquiti router arrives and I hope it won't take too long to get everything up and running including the IPTV service.

UVerse also uses multicast for its TV service. I merely VLAN'd the IPTV devices.. easy fix to get them off the home wired LAN.
 

100% GTG! Just followed the recipe above. You do need to get comfortable with CLI for step 1 and the rather obscure UI for the remainder, but I had already been fussing with the thing for about 3 hours so it was easy by the time I got to this project and it only took me about 5 minutes.

Highly recommended if you are willing to learn some CLI!

Just got TDS to agree to take back their supplied modem