Background
My understanding is that PrimeCare devices are not counted against the SpeedFusion VPN Peers limit. We have benefited from this with a FusionHub Solo connecting some BR1 and Balance 20X PrimeCare units in addition to the one non-PrimeCare unit.
However, when we deployed a Balance 20X with FW 8.3.0 as a hub with three non-PrimeCare devices as spokes, we could not add more than two additional PrimeCare devices - adding any more was not successful, resulting in a failure at the authentication step (dropping back to “starting…”).
Question
Is there a way to gain the same experience as with the FusionHub, i.e., having PrimeCare devices not count against the B20X VPN peers limit?
Request
If not, please consider this a request to apply the same exception to the max # of peers rule as is currently in place for FusionHubs (possible with the guidance that the number of peers may be limited for practical purposes as the load on the hub increases).
Rationale
I expect the limit, in terms of the resource demand on the hub is more a matter of the traffic than of the number of connections as such. In our case we would employ this in order to support a number of remote, low-traffic devices in the field. Minimal traffic, but more than five spokes.
Work-around
I expect we can get around this by establishing a FusionHub which connects all the PrimeCare devices, and then connect the FusionHub to the real hub device at the main office. However, that is such a displeasingly ugly architecture. And it adds to the complexity of the network management/maintenance.
Please advise.
Cheers,
Z
@zegor_mjol ,
Just to confirm the request is more to increasing the number of supported PepVPN peers for the B20x ?
We have maximum up to 5 Peers licence keys:
- Up to 5 PepVPN/ SpeedFusion Peers License Key for Selected Models (PVN-LC-05)
You mentioned about more than 5 spokes , how many peers you are looking at for the B20x ?
The key request is that Balance devices get the same privileges as FusionHubs.
E.g., FusionHub Solo can:
- connect to one VPN peer + an unconstrained number of PrimeCare peers.
The similar pattern for a B20X would be to
- connect up to five VPN peers + an unconstrained number of PrimeCare peers.
Right now there is a difference in the handling of the constraints on FusionHub Solos and of Balance devices.
For our architecture as of this particular moment we would ideally allow four non-PrimeCare peers and 15 (low-traffic) PrimeCare peers,
Being money-constrained (as are all non-profits, I expect :-)) we engage in a trade-off of volunteer time (maintenance) v. money cost (licenses and the like). Right now we are spending volunteer time on this, maintaining a more complex network architecture.
We can handle it using FusionHubs (i.e., volunteer time), so this is not a do-or-die issue. But it would be helpful.
Cheers,
Sigurd
@zegor_mjol ,
Balance/MAX/Xseries devices are the hardware appliance while FusionHub is just a software based VPN concentrator, the licensing handling can’t be the same as we need to consider the hardware limit and the device usage. There are still other concerns that need to take into the consideration even the usage is low.
Knowing that you always focus in education and non profits sector. For your case, please open a ticket and ATTN to SitLoongs, I will bring this to the account manager and see what we can help here ^^.
1 Like
The policy is understood (and understandable). But one may have hopes 
W.r.t. our particular case, I am very appreciative of the support Peplink continues to provide. I’ll enter a ticket (probably tomorrow - it is getting late in California).
(There’re going to be two tickets - we also found ourselves with a defective CAT-12 FlexModule that worked well under 8.1.3., but caused bad behavior when the host B20X was upgraded to 8.3.0.) Totally different issues, of course.
Cheers,
Sigurd
1 Like
