So, As a retired engineer that has worked on networks for Fortune 100 companies for over 35 years, I have a few thoughts on Peplink.
It has some really nice ideas. Implementation, MEH.
I have a 210 Rev 4 and I’ve tested this thing 6 ways to sunday.
1st, Iv’e fed this thing 2 x 200M links and have speed tested the bonded tunnel. 85-90M. rc6/DWB/SFC, OK, but the spec sheet says 150m. So specs are off.
2nd, Simple implementations like, run the onboard OpenVPN client thru the bonded tunnel where you REALLY need it. Mostly because the traffic going thru the SFC gets rejected A LOT by cloudflare. A solution is to run things thru a trusted VPN service, which you can do BEHIND the router, just not FROM it. VPN implemention MEH.
Traffic selectors. Really nice ones if you want to pay for SFC. Zoom, Teams, etc… DONE. want the same selectors in Fusionhub… NOPE.
Looking at the active connections status page.?? seeing really nice detailed info.? want to use that info as selectors… NOPE.
I could probably go on, but I’m giving up on the device. While I’m sure the units have a specific market, probably mostly industrial/construction/field work, I would never use these in any of my clients offices or data centers.
Maybe in your 35 years as Network Engineer, you have contact with a lot of high level and expensive network devices. What Peplink offers? Just simple…
Network equipment that works and offers connectivity without complications in its configuration and a way to maintain connectivity in places and/or countries that do not have a network infrastructure guaranteed by local operators.
So… before posting a message denigrating the product or its manufacturer, please look over the horizon and see what we have.
The forum is here to accept negative or positive messages. But the forum is a collection of people who take their work very seriously and working cooperatively improve the product day by day.
I’m 56 years old and I’ve been working with data networks since 1989 and before that I’ve been working as an electronics technician since 1981. I’ve seen a lot of software, paid and free. I’ve seen a lot of network solutions. I’ve studied many programming languages since COBOL and C. But what Peplink does for the value it does and with the high technical degree it does, no one does.
@MarceloBarros very well said. And add in the OUTSTANDING support that Peplink offers if you have a problem.
Maybe Peplink could be better but when you’re in the middle of nowhere with virtually no connectivity Peplink works every time for my 82 year old parents and we can feel safe letting them spend time in the woods knowing they can call if they’re unwell or a tree falls down or some similar problem when they’re 6 miles from the nearest paved road and their iPhone doesn’t have enough cell signal to make a call.
Balance 210 is from their old lineup, it uses a very old SoC, so not sure what you’re expecting performance wise.
The Balance 310 5G/310 Fiber 5G use a lot faster SoC and we’ve seen 600-700Mbps SpeedFusion throughput with that model, even though it’s specced at 500Mbps. Also keep in mind that Encryption adds to the overhead, so if you have that enabled try without it enabled.
We’ve switched to Peplink in 2016 and haven’t looked back to other brands and we’ve been content. We started with the Balance 310’s and BR1 ENT models and are now running mostly Balance 20X, Balance 310-5G and some SDX Pro in the field.
Peplink does support OpenVPN and IPSec VPN, but it performs best with SpeedFusion, which you can also do with virtual units (FusionHub Solo) and is a lot easier to setup and maintain.