Peplink Routers and SD-WAN: The Connection That Holds

The Peplink router on site sees every line individually: fiber, 5G cellular, Starlink. SpeedFusion spreads the packets across all paths at the same time and sends them, encrypted, to a remote peer that reassembles them in the right order. If one line fails, phone calls, video calls and ERP sessions keep running on the remaining paths. Nobody has to log in again.

Peplink builds network hardware for organizations that cannot accept an internet outage: enterprise routers of the Balance series, branch routers of the B One series, mobile routers of the MAX series, Dome antennas with a built-in modem, multi-orbit routers for Starlink, plus Wi-Fi 6 access points, PoE switches and the virtual appliance FusionHub. All devices run on the same firmware base and are managed through InControl 2. That is the real advantage of the brand: a branch router, a broadcast van and the hub in the data center speak the same language.

Ascend was founded in Nuremberg in 2010 and has been building networks for more than 15 years in which an outage costs money. Peplink is our platform for that. We are Peplink Certified Gold Partner and Peplink Authorized E-Tailer: you buy through the official sales channel with the full manufacturer warranty, valid Care Plans and no gray-market goods. Two of our technicians, Johannes Fickeis and Christian Heckel, hold the certifications Peplink Certified Engineer (PCE), Peplink Certified Associate and Peplink Certified Sales Specialist; Johannes Fickeis is also a PCE Trainer and may hold Peplink training courses for customers and partner system integrators.

For you this means: architecture advice, configuration and support come from technicians certified by Peplink itself, not from generalists. Our support is reachable around the clock.

SpeedFusion is the reason to buy a Peplink router. Between your router and a Peplink peer, the technology builds an encrypted tunnel (256-bit AES) and distributes traffic at packet level across all connected lines. Three operating modes matter:

• Hot Failover. Every session runs in the tunnel, not on a specific line. If the fiber drops, the tunnel keeps using cellular or Starlink; the video call stays up, and the VoIP system notices nothing.
• Bandwidth Bonding. The bandwidth of all lines is added up. A single download runs over DSL, 5G and Starlink at the same time. This is what separates bonding from classic load balancing, which only distributes whole sessions across lines and does not make any single connection faster.
• WAN Smoothing. Critical packets are sent over two paths at once. If cellular loses a packet, the copy arrives over the other line. For video conferences, live broadcasts and telephony, this usually matters more than raw bandwidth.

The remote peer is the part many people forget. Bonding and smoothing need Peplink at both ends: the router on site, and in the data center or the cloud a second router or FusionHub, the virtual SpeedFusion appliance with license tiers from FusionHub Essential (5 peers) up to large enterprise tiers. If you do not want to run your own hub, you can use SpeedFusion Connect, Peplink's cloud service with endpoints in public data centers, or our hosted hub in Nuremberg. Without a remote peer, a Peplink router remains a good multi-WAN router with load balancing and failover between sessions; the magic starts with the tunnel.

What this looks like in practice is shown by the example SD-WAN for sites: branches with two inexpensive lines instead of one expensive leased line, centrally managed, with Hot Failover at every site.

Branch and small site. A B One 5G or Balance 20X replaces the provider router, takes DSL or fiber as the first path and the built-in modem as the second. With PrimeCare, Hot Failover, bonding and smoothing are added; InControl 2 rolls out firmware and configuration to all branches.

Headquarters and data center. A Balance 310X 5G combines fiber via SFP with a 5G modem and delivers 500 Mbit/s of encrypted PepVPN throughput for 50 to 500 users. For large sites, the modular Balance SDX provides two 10G SFP+ WAN ports, up to eight cellular connections via FlexModule, drop-in mode for transparent installation into existing networks, and high availability for active-passive clusters.

Vehicle and fleet. MAX BR1 Pro 5G and MAX BR2 Pro are built for 10 to 30 V DC, vibration and temperatures from -40 to 65 °C. GPS reports the position to InControl 2, and ignition sensing starts and stops the router together with the vehicle. Broadcast vans and construction sites combine several modems, for example with the MAX HD4 or the MAX Transit. For fleets there are Peplink's pooled eSIM data plans, in which several vehicles share one data volume; for remote devices without direct access, InTouch adds remote access to interfaces behind the router.

Ship, mast and roof. The MAX HD1 Dome Pro combines a 5G modem and antennas in an IP67 housing that is powered by a single Ethernet cable via PoE. A router below deck bonds the Dome with Starlink; beyond 25 nautical miles, Starlink takes over alone. The details are on the page Internet on a yacht.

Starlink everywhere. Peplink routers accept Starlink as an ordinary WAN source. Smoothing evens out the short dropouts of the satellite network, cellular stays in the tunnel as a second path, and for sites without any fixed infrastructure, multi-orbit routers bond several constellations. How we secure Starlink is described on the page Starlink for business.

Hardware and licenses from one source. Routers, antennas, access points, switches, FusionHub licenses, InControl 2 subscriptions and Care Plans are available with up-to-date net prices and stock levels in the Ascend Shop.

Care Plans, chosen correctly. Peplink ties the SpeedFusion features of many current models to an active PrimeCare plan; EssentialCare+ protects devices without a PrimeCare model beyond the warranty. Which plan belongs to which device is explained on the page PrimeCare and EssentialCare, and we tell you before you buy what you really need.

Remote peer as a service. If you do not want to run your own hub, you can use our hosted SpeedFusion hub in the data center in Nuremberg. For larger networks we set up FusionHub in your cloud or on your hypervisor.

SIM cards and data plans. With every router we supply the matching SIM on request: our multi-network SIM, which automatically registers with Vodafone, O2 or Telekom in Germany and applies at the same price across the EU, or Peplink's eSIM data plans for fleets.

Rent instead of buy. For events, construction sites and interim solutions we rent out Peplink routers such as the Balance 20X or the MAX BR1 Pro 5G, preconfigured and with a SIM.

Training. In the Peplink training your team learns SpeedFusion and InControl 2 on real devices, led by a certified PCE Trainer.