Remote office with one ISP. Balance 20 or 210?

We are exploring the possibility of replacing our five-site MPLS WAN with a SpeedFusion VPN. We have determined that the Balance 380 makes the most sense for our three largest sites, and we are now trying to decide between the Balance 20 and the 210 for our other two sites.

These two remote sites are very small (a few users each) and will have just one ISP each. The Balance 210 is capable of SpeedFusion Bandwidth Bonding, while the Balance 20 is not. Question: is the whole idea of SpeedFusion irrelevant for a site with only one ISP? In other words, since the two sites will have just one ISP each, would that mean that even if we opt for the 210 for those sites, the 210s would not be able to establish a SpeedFusion VPN connection with our 380s, and would instead only be able to establish a plain old IPsec link to our 380s, simply because the remote sites’ 210s would have just one ISP connected to them?

Would a Balance 210 for a small remote office with only one ISP offer any benefits whatsoever when compared to a Balance 20?

The Balance 210 will allow you to build a SpeedFusion VPN – even with only one ISP. I would not consider this to be irrelevant, as SpeedFusion still has advantages over an IPsec VPN. A SpeedFusion VPN is simple to configure, all SpeedFusion peers at the remote sites will be able to talk to each other, and also have failover with a second SpeedFusion VPN to another large site.

If there is a possibility of adding a backup connection (example: USB modem) at the remote offices in the future – it can simply be added to SpeedFusion for failing over if that becomes necessary.

If these advantages are not a concern for this deployment, of course the Balance 20 can establish an IPsec VPN to the primary 380 network and also to the network at a second 380 site.