SD WAN
What is an SD-WAN Network?
A Software Defined-Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a network that can use any backhaul (3G/4G, DSL, FTTC, Fibre, WISP, WiMAX, etc.) to connect all your data centres, branch offices, cloud applications and remote users. It can allow your WAN to use a mixture of all the above circuits in all locations.
The Role of SD-WAN
SD-WANs can allow your organisation to securely increase your Wide Area Network flexibility, visibility, performance and control, allowing you to increase bandwidth whilst hastening deployment times, reducing cost, lowering your MPLS overhead and increasing resilience.
IT Budgets are not increasing as fast as the need for extra bandwidth and vendor lock-in reduces options for change, so alternatives are needing to be researched.
Why SD-WAN
SD-WANs can do traffic shaping and by having more bandwidth and a larger number of connections they can reduce the need for QoS but for mission-critical apps and services MPLS still has a place.
SD-WANs can avoid latency and jitter per packet by using multiple circuits but if all the SD-WAN circuits are experiencing issues then you cannot avoid it.
SD-WANs benefits compared to MPLS are:
- Faster deployment times
- Lower cost
- Higher network visibility
- Easier management
- Easier maintenance
- Flexibility
- Scalability
- Better security
