Securing Traffic to Remote Offices

Hey guys. I've been researching the snot out of this and I'm looking for some advice.

I'm managing 3 offices over a slow link. It's a T-1 but, we're sharing so much bandwidth, we average between 50-100KBs inter-office speeds (we're inside a portal and share bandwidth with many other departments. And yes, I said 50-100 KBs over a T-1).

I'm looking to secure only LAN traffic over this link (Not internet bound traffic). What direction would you guys go? IPSec via Group Policy? Hardware Firewall with VPN? Software based VPN?

I don't need a full-blown solution, just a general direction to research. Thanks.

How many concurrent users talking over links as an average?
What applications/protocols will be using links?
VPN overhead might chew up more avail bandwidth than you want.
Do you have budget? Do your policies dictate a commercial solution with support contracts?

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How many concurrent users talking over links as an average?

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40-50

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What applications/protocols will be using links?

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NetBIOS, FTP, File Sharing, Telnet, WSUS Servers, Symantec Servers, ICMP, all standard Server <-> Client Domain Traffic

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VPN overhead might chew up more avail bandwidth than you want.

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I was thinking of (3) Fortinet 80c hardware devices at each of the 3 gateways. Using IPSec VPN. The VPN overhead is what I'm concerned with.

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Do you have budget? Do your policies dictate a commercial solution with support contracts?

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Not much of a budget to speak of. A $2000 solution would require effort to get approved. No dictated solution to speak of.

The Fortigates should do as good as any.
Can you get one in on good RMA terms and try it?
Or do you have a spare boxe(s) around to give OpenVPN a spin? To test slowdown anyway...