What is SD-WAN - SD-WAN is a software area wide-area
network architecture that allows organizations to modernize their traditional
WAN networks to meet the growing needs of digital evolution. With SD-WAN
solutions, organizations obtain high-performance network resources that support
digital transformation (DX) initiatives to simplify operations and improve
business agility.
SD-WAN
solutions transform an organization's resources, leveraging enterprise WAN, as
well as multi-cloud connectivity, to provide high-speed application throughput
at the edge of WAN branches. SD-WAN provides a centralized control mechanism
that can determine and direct the optimal route for traffic (MPLS, 3G / 4G or
broadband), ensuring that your organization can quickly and easily access
business-critical cloud applications.
Traditional
architectures consisted of a WAN concentrator and a radio architecture based on
slow and expensive MPLS connectivity, which offered a below-average user
experience, especially for cloud-based applications. For a user to access a
website, traffic must first pass through the WAN, a security stack, and finally,
the forms. In a world where most users expect the same broadband connectivity
at home, this type of legacy WAN architecture does not add up.
The evolution
beyond this type of traditional WAN architecture with SD-WAN allows
organizations to overcome the archaic services of MPLS and open their networks
to access the Internet directly. SD-WAN solutions not only enable organizations
to reap the benefits of software applications as a service (SaaS), public cloud
applications and unified communications but ultimately offer a lower total cost
of ownership (TCO).
How SD-WAN Works
An SD-WAN
solution connects users with any application anywhere, from the data center to
the cloud. SD-WAN intelligently determines the path that best meets the optimal
performance needs for a specific use. It then directs traffic to the ideal WAN
route, while traditional WAN architectures can route all applications through
MPLS. These are some characteristics that define the operation of an SD-WAN
solution and its evolution from a WAN infrastructure:
Knowledge Of Applications
With
traditional WAN solutions, organizations experience less than optimal quality
and find it challenging to provide high-performance bandwidth for
mission-critical applications. Since legacy WAN architectures rely on packet
routing, they lack in-depth application visibility. However, SD-WAN solutions intelligently
identify forms in the first packet of data traffic. Network teams get the
visibility they need on the most used applications in the organization, helping
them make smarter and better-informed decisions and policies.
