How Peplink Connects Branch Offices: SpeedFusion Explained

Connecting a head office to its branches sounds like a solved problem: build a VPN between the firewalls and move on. It works until a branch's only link is a flaky fibre line, a congested cellular connection or a satellite dish, and then "the VPN is down" becomes a daily complaint. Peplink's SpeedFusion is built for exactly that situation. This guide explains what it does, what each feature costs in bandwidth and licensing, and when an ordinary firewall VPN is perfectly good enough.

What a branch link is really asked to do

For most businesses the requirement isn't raw speed, it's staying up. Point-of-sale systems, shared accounting software, VoIP and remote desktops all fail badly when the tunnel drops, even for a minute. A branch-to-branch link has three jobs: stay connected when one line fails, stay usable when a line is lossy, and be manageable when there are ten sites rather than two. Peplink's approach addresses each of them, with different features.

What a SpeedFusion tunnel does

SpeedFusion is Peplink's tunnelling technology between its devices. Peplink describes it as combining several connections, such as fibre, cellular, 5G and satellite, into a single tunnel. Its main features are:

• Bonding. Peplink states that SpeedFusion distributes data across all available connections at packet level and aggregates them into one high-capacity tunnel, so a single session can use the combined bandwidth of several links.
• Hot failover. If a link fails, traffic moves to a healthy one and, Peplink states, active sessions stay up. A standby link such as cellular can sit outside the bond until the primary fails, which keeps data costs down.
• WAN smoothing. Redundant packets are sent over more than one link so that packet loss on one is hidden. It trades bandwidth for resilience: third-party training material describes the medium setting as roughly doubling traffic, so use it for latency-sensitive traffic such as voice, not for everything.
• Forward error correction (FEC). A lighter alternative to smoothing on newer firmware, adding a smaller and configurable overhead. Sources differ on the exact percentages, so check Peplink's current documentation for your firmware.

These are Peplink's own descriptions of its technology. Real performance depends on the quality of the links underneath, not just on the router.

Hub-and-spoke or mesh

Peplink's InControl 2 management platform can build SpeedFusion profiles in three shapes:

• Star (hub-and-spoke): branches connect to head office, and reach each other through it. Simple to manage, but the hub needs enough capacity for every branch.
• Fully meshed: every site connects directly to every other site. Better for branch-to-branch traffic, with more tunnels to carry.
• Point-to-point: a single link between two sites.

If a site shouldn't run its own endpoint, Peplink offers FusionHub, a virtual SpeedFusion appliance for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and SpeedFusion Connect, a hosted endpoint service. Which you'd choose depends on where your servers live and how many peers you need.

Managing ten branches

InControl 2 is Peplink's cloud management platform. Peplink states it provides zero-touch provisioning, fleet-wide monitoring and alerts, and central management of SpeedFusion. A profile applied to a group of devices configures the tunnels on every device in it, which is what makes ten sites manageable without ten separate visits.

Note that it comes bundled into Peplink's support plans (PrimeCare or EssentialCare, depending on the device), not as a free extra.

Size the site first, then choose the model

There isn't one right Peplink model. The choice follows a site survey: how many users and devices each branch has, which links are available (fibre, cellular, Starlink), how many SpeedFusion tunnels the hub has to terminate, and how much traffic needs to cross them. Specification figures only mean something against those numbers, which is why we size the site before specifying any hardware.

Popular models

These are the models we're most often asked about, with the SpeedFusion figures Peplink lists on its comparison pages:

The BR1 Mini 5G stands in here for the BR1 family, and other BR1 and Balance models differ. Peplink measures throughput on standard frame sizes and says real results vary, and the figures above change with configuration and licence, so treat the table as orientation, not a specification.

Three points cut across the whole range:

• Peer counts and licences differ by model. A hub in a star topology needs headroom for every branch it terminates.
• Some features need an active subscription. Peplink states that on devices covered by PrimeCare, bonding, smoothing and hot failover are disabled if the plan lapses. Basic routing keeps working. Whether a given model gates these features differs, so confirm it for the exact model before designing around it.
• Encryption reduces throughput, as it does on any VPN, and real speed depends on the links underneath, not just on the router.

Peplink versus a firewall VPN

A firewall VPN, such as FortiGate IPsec, is the usual way to link branches, and it's worth understanding how it compares:

• Fortinet's documentation describes per-packet distribution across aggregated IPsec tunnels in its SD-WAN and forward error correction features, so firewalls can do part of what SpeedFusion does.
• Peplink argues that its packet-based bonding differs from session-based IPsec bonding. That is a vendor claim, and how the two behave over uneven links, such as Starlink plus cellular, depends on the setup.

Peplink earns its place when branches depend on mixed or unreliable links (fibre plus cellular, or satellite in the mix), when a link failing shouldn't drop live sessions, or when you want one management platform across many small sites. It also works alongside a firewall rather than instead of one: a Peplink can sit in front of a branch to manage its uplinks, with the FortiGate or other firewall behind it handling security.

Sabah context

Many Sabah sites don't have two good wired links, which is why this matters here. Peplink states that multiple Starlink units can be bonded together and that Starlink can serve as a backup link. We deployed a Starlink dish with a Peplink BR1 Mini router for a federal government unit's rural site visits, reaching roughly 80 Mbps download in an area with no cellular signal; the case study has the details. Our connectivity comparison covers how the underlying links compare.

How Hakobi helps

We design branch and multi-site networks, choose the connection mix for each site, and deploy and manage the Peplink or firewall side. See our Network Infrastructure and Starlink Rural Connectivity services, and the Peplink partner page. Pricing depends on the number of sites, the model at each and the support plan, so request a quote and we'll scope it from there.

Sources: SpeedFusion bonding technology, router comparison: Balance One and BR1 Mini 5G, Balance 30 Pro, Balance 310X, PrimeCare, FusionHub, SpeedFusion Connect, InControl 2, Peplink and Starlink, Peplink; SpeedFusion profiles, Connectivity101; aggregate IPsec tunnels in SD-WAN, Fortinet.