PPPoE Problems on Cisco 2911 Router (TPG EFM / Business Ethernet Broadband)

TPG are a great cheap little ISP, however their support is not crash hot nor their guidance on how to configure network gear to work with them. Basically TPG provide a fairly cheap unlimited data-plan for businesses under the name of EFM (Ethernet First Mile). When you get this service from TPG we received an abrupt email saying simply:

Network Details: 

• Username: user@pig.tpg.com.au
• Password: password 
• CE IP Address: 1.1.1.1/30 
• PE IP Address: 1.1.1.2/30

Then a "test and validate it works within 2 days otherwise we assume it is operational and will start billing" line. So I suppose I need to test this...

The inclusion of the username/password was a little different to what I expected from TPG. I assumed that we'd just get an Ethernet feed and connect into that with an IP address, no questions or authentication asked... however the inclusion of a username/password indicated that a PPPoE connection was required (not that TPG tell you that anywhere from what I can see).

This was not expected... but it was not that big a deal either. I grabbed a 2911 we had sitting around in our lab, connect it up and started googling away for a solution. Guides came up pretty quick for ISR routers with PPPoE... but when trying to apply these configurations to our router I noted that it refused to accept a section frequently referenced in these guides:

vpdn enable
no vpdn logging
vpdn−group pppoe
 request−dialin
  protocol pppoe

Now the section refused is the last line. 2911's don't have the PPPoE option here. You can type protocol but the only option after that is l2tp which didn't help here. Turns out this is another ISR G2 thing. To force the PPPoE to take place you instead have to do the following:

bba-group pppoe global virtual-template 1
vpdn enablevpdn-group 1

Below is the full sample configuration I used:

bba-group pppoe global
 virtual-template 1
!
vpdn enable
vpdn-group 1
!
interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 no ip address
 duplex auto
 speed auto
 pppoe enable group global
 pppoe-client dial-pool-number 1
!
interface Dialer1
 ip address 1.1.1.1 255.255.255.252
 ip mtu 1492
 encapsulation ppp
 dialer pool 1
 dialer-group 1
 ppp authentication pap callin
 ppp pap sent-username user@pig.tpg.com.au password 0 password
 no cdp enable
!
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Dialer1
!
dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit

Hopefully this saves someone else some hassle. Thanks for reading.