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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Peplink SpeedFusion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN reduces WAN expenses, improves efficiency, and enhances reliability, with ROI in three years for most users.
Sentiment score
8.4
Peplink SpeedFusion improved network stability, reduced downtime, and increased productivity, while financial savings and technical support enhanced user satisfaction.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN support is highly rated for expertise and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and redirection challenges.
Sentiment score
4.6
Peplink SpeedFusion customer service is praised for quick responses and efficient support, though hardware support delays unit replacements.
Cisco's ongoing reorganizations have affected the quality of technical support, which varies depending on the engineer handling cases.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is praised for its scalability, suitable for diverse industries and enterprises, despite some technical expansion limits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Peplink SpeedFusion is scalable, supports many users, simplifies adding sites/devices, and is praised for flexibility, reliability, and performance.
The ease of configuration and features like zero-touch provisioning enhance the scalability of Cisco SD-WAN, especially in disaster recovery situations.
Cisco SD-WAN is highly scalable and can be expanded to more than 10,000 sites.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is stable and reliable, but complex setups and new deployments may face minor issues and bugs.
Sentiment score
8.2
Peplink SpeedFusion is praised for stability, secure VPN, failover, WAN smoothing, and seamless connectivity, ideal for broadcasting and banking.
While some software-related issues and bugs were encountered, they did not cause the whole environment to crash.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN needs cost efficiency, better interface, enhanced security, simplified licensing, and improved support and scalability.
Peplink SpeedFusion needs better pricing, hardware support, advanced firewall, scalability, and security features for industrial and enterprise users.
Including more features like integrating with Splunk for monitoring vulnerabilities would help eliminate the need for other SOC solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is costly compared to competitors, with complex licensing but offers comprehensive solutions and performance benefits.
Peplink SpeedFusion offers a balanced value with higher costs, appealing lifetime licensing, and flexible pricing structures for customer preferences.
Its pricing is justifiable due to the comprehensive solution it offers.
It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller businesses when using the Meraki version.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN offers centralized management, security, scalability, cloud integration, and enhances network performance and cost savings.
Peplink SpeedFusion offers robust LTE, VPN, bonding, aggregation, and hot failover, ensuring network resilience and effective communication.
Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations.
Integration with Cisco ISE, Cisco Firewalls, and other Cisco solutions is beneficial.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
2nd
Ranking in WAN Edge
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (5th)
Peplink SpeedFusion
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
9th
Ranking in WAN Edge
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables secure and flexible branch connectivity with application-aware routing
The valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN include its security policies and zone-based firewall that are applied to every site, as well as application-aware routing. Security is standard compliant, eliminating config drift that was prevalent before manual configurations. Application-aware routing offers flexibility in using different lines for traffic, depending on the policy implemented.
Samuel Romero - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, easy to install, and scalable
Peplink SpeedFusion needs a thin rail model for industrial solutions. The stability has room for improvement. Peplink SpeedFusion needs to have a heavy-duty heat sink on the case to perform better. Generally, what I found is that devices that have a heat sink on a case or, more weight on a case to absorb the heat, perform a little better. I get some areas where I'm right at the hundred and fifty degrees. So I've had a few failures not many, but I found more failures than a Cisco ISO eleven or a Moxa router. Those solutions have more mass to absorb the heat. Most failures have a lot to do with the case. That's why a lot of people have a hard time pushing Peplink SpeedFusion, and they want to move to Cradlepoint because they have a much more ruggedized case.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco SD-WAN?
When considering the most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN, the decoupling of self-monitoring stands out significantly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
The pricing for Cisco SD-WAN is rated eight out of ten, with some variability depending on the reseller discounts and the size of the enterprise. It is also relatively cost-effective for smaller bu...
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
The main area for improvement in Cisco SD-WAN is the lack of documentation, which often lags behind the software releases. This is especially notable since Cisco acquired the solution and is still ...
What do you like most about Peplink SpeedFusion?
In the Philippines, VPN usage may not be widely known, but we leverage VPN effectively within my organization. I've shared our in-house systems with other district offices, as I cover fifteen munic...
What needs improvement with Peplink SpeedFusion?
The product needs to aggregate the bandwidth of different ISPs. It needs to improve scalability as well.
 

Also Known As

Cisco SD-WAN
No data available
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
MIT Robotics Team, Intel, Apple, Google, Hootsuite, Northrop Gruman, Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Avocent, GE, VW, Marriott, Renaissance, WSI, Union /Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs. Peplink SpeedFusion and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.