My home network (in France) had until recently a Draytek 2862 router, which had a permanent site-to-site VPN to a Fritz!Box router at my flat in the UK. Thanks to the flexibility of the Draytek I could send traffic via the VPN depending on the source IP (e.g. the TV). Access to BBC iPlayer thereby assured (and yeah I do have a TV licence in the flat, so I don't feel too guilty!) It all worked wonderfully (if a little slow).

Then along came France's superfast fibre - FTTP @ 2 gigabit, even here in rural back-of-beyond. OMG it is so quick.

So I can't use the Draytek as my main router any more, and I'm stuck (for various reasons) with the ISP's rubbish Livebox 6. But I was wondering whether it might be possible to set the Draytek up as a kind of standalone VPN server. I have a Microsoft Windows 2019 server on the network, and I could easily use that for DHCP, which would make it easy to set up policies so that specific devices (the TV) get a different gateway (the Draytek).

But at this point I start to feel I'm drowning in my own ignorance. So at the risk of appearing a total idiot: is there any way that I could use my 2862 within my network, as a standalone VPN server, to take traffic from certain clients (the TV) and direct it via a VPN, through the new fibre router, and thence out to the sunny UK?

Yes it probably could if you port forwarded all the relevant ports of your protocol of choice through to the Draytek. As long as it's on the same network range as the Livebox, it should work. Bit clumsy though.You'd need to disable all DHCP scopes on the Draytek and possibly more to dumb it all down.

You could achieve the same thing with a PiVPN (cheap Raspberry Pi running easy to use VPN server software).

Ah yes, thanks - I have a Pi lying around here so will have a play with that first!