What SpeedFusion Connect really costs — a data volume calculation

The interesting functions of SpeedFusion — Hot Failover, WAN Smoothing, Bandwidth Bonding — are properties of a tunnel. A tunnel has two ends. One of them stands in your cabinet, the other has to exist somewhere.

There are exactly three options for that:

• A second Peplink device at another site. Obvious if you want to connect two sites; useless if you simply need a stable internet connection.
• SpeedFusion Connect, the service hosted by Peplink. No operation of your own, but a data counter.
• Your own FusionHub, Peplink's virtual appliance, run on a VM in the data centre. No data counter, but operational responsibility.

Anyone who compares only the hardware prices overlooks this decision — and for a production that broadcasts regularly it is the most expensive item in operation. Hence the figures here.

Peplink devices with the designation -PRM include one year of PrimeCare, and PrimeCare brings an included allowance for SpeedFusion Connect with it. Its size depends on the device class and appears as a footnote in the technical data:

• B One and B One 5G: 500 GB per year
• Balance 310: 1 TB per year

Two points that tend to get lost here. First, the allowance is tied to an active PrimeCare — if the subscription expires, not only the included data disappears but also Hot Failover, WAN Smoothing and bonding themselves; they are PrimeCare functions as well. Second, the allowance is per device and year, not per month, and it does not accumulate.

That gives you a figure. The real question is how long it lasts.

Let us work through a realistic broadcast position: a 1080p video stream with presentation sharing, of the kind a seminar or training studio produces.

Step 1 — payload. For sending 1080p, Zoom states around 3.8 Mbit/s upstream; sharing and audio add about 0.15 Mbit/s. On the receiving side it depends on the layout: with a gallery view of around 25 participants, about 2 Mbit/s is realistic. In total, therefore, roughly 6 Mbit/s in both directions.

Step 2 — from Mbit/s to GB per hour. 6 Mbit/s × 3600 s ÷ 8 = 2.7 GB per hour.

Step 3 — factoring in WAN Smoothing. Level Normal transmits every packet twice. 2.7 becomes 5.4 GB per hour. At level Medium it would be 8.1 GB.

Step 4 — extrapolating to the week. A studio that broadcasts for five hours on three days comes to 15 hours. 15 × 5.4 GB ≈ 80 GB per week.

And with that, the answer to the initial question:

• 500 GB of included volume corresponds to around six production weeks.
• 1 TB of included volume corresponds to around twelve production weeks.

For an operation that broadcasts every week, the included allowance is therefore used up after about a quarter, regardless of the device. The difference between 500 GB and 1 TB shifts the moment, it does not solve the problem.

A note on diligence: exactly how duplicated packets are counted in the billing is one of those things that should be measured on the actual device instead of being assumed. That changes nothing about the order of magnitude and therefore nothing about the recommendation.

The service does not switch itself off — that is the good news. Once the allowance has been used up, a fair-use policy applies which limits the speed to 10 Mbit/s. The regular tariff levels reach up to 200 Mbit/s; for higher demands there is an unlimited package with up to 400 Mbit/s, booked monthly or annually per serial number.

Now the arithmetic gets uncomfortable: our smoothed conference stream needs around 8 Mbit/s upstream. The throttling to 10 Mbit/s therefore sits exactly at the load limit of that single stream — with no reserve for everything else that runs through the tunnel at the same time. Protection that operates at the throttling limit in the fourth quarter is not protection.

That leaves two paths: buy the volume permanently, or provide the counterpart yourself.

FusionHub is Peplink's virtual appliance: the same SpeedFusion remote end, only as software on a VM of your own. Three properties make it attractive for a production that broadcasts regularly.

There is no data counter. The traffic runs over your VM and your uplink. Whether WAN Smoothing doubles the volume is therefore a question of line capacity, not of billing — and that is exactly why smoothing can stay permanently active instead of being tied to a time window.

The licence is free of charge for the single case. The FusionHub Solo variant is free and limited to one peer — that is, exactly one connected Peplink device, which fits one site. Peplink has lifted the earlier throughput limit of 100 Mbit/s; many sources on the web still quote it, but it is out of date. Devices with PrimeCare also do not count against the peer limits of higher FusionHub licences.

The location can be chosen. A counterpart in a German data centre means the shortest path and therefore the lowest additional latency. With the hosted service you take the location you are given.

Two things have to be known for this. First, the licence check needs outbound reachability to Peplink's InControl services; a completely isolated network does not work. Second, a VM is an operational item: updates, monitoring, reachability. Anyone who does not want to handle that themselves has it operated — as a managed service it is a calculable monthly item instead of a data counter running alongside.

The choice is pleasantly simple if you base it on the usage profile and not on the price of the individual item.

• Emergency protection, a few hours a month: the included allowance is enough. Book nothing extra, enable WAN Smoothing for the critical sub-tunnel, done.
• Regular production, several hours per week: your own FusionHub. The calculation above shows that every included allowance falls within a quarter; an unlimited subscription per device is the more expensive permanent solution.
• Several sites that talk to each other: FusionHub or Peplink-to-Peplink anyway, because here the site interconnect and not the internet access is the goal.
• Latency is critical: FusionHub in the nearest data centre, because every detour via a third-party location adds to the round-trip time.

What remains is the unromantic insight: with SpeedFusion it is not the choice of router that determines the operating costs, but the choice of counterpart. The difference between a B One and a Balance 310 is a few hundred euros, once. The difference between a rented and your own tunnel endpoint is a few hundred euros per year — permanently.

This article was researched and written with AI assistance and reviewed by Ascend's Peplink-certified technicians before publication.