What is SD-WAN? A comprehensive guide
As businesses are increasingly reliant on cloud-based applications, remote work, and global operations, traditional networking solutions are often insufficient. The need for agile, reliable, and cost-effective network solutions has never been greater. More and more enterprises are adopting Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN); a transformative technology designed to meet the demands of modern business connectivity.
Implementing SD-WAN within your connectivity strategy can have wide-reaching benefits for a business, but you need to understand what it is and how it works to decide if it’s the right option for your enterprise. We’ve put together a complete guide to SD-WAN, exploring what it is, why it is important, and how it functions within modern network architectures.
What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN stands for Software-Defined Wide Area Network. It is a virtual WAN architecture that allows enterprises to leverage any combination of transport services or any available access network to securely connect users to applications.
By abstracting the network hardware and controlling network traffic through software, SD-WAN simplifies the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling the networking hardware from its control mechanism.
4 Key features of SD-WAN:
- Centralized management: SD-WAN provides a centralized control function to securely and intelligently direct traffic across the WAN. This makes it easier to manage, optimize, and secure network resources.
- Application awareness: SD-WAN solutions are designed to recognize and prioritize traffic for critical applications, ensuring optimal performance.
- Cost optimizations: By utilizing cost-effective broadband services alongside traditional MPLS circuits, SD-WAN can significantly reduce operational costs.
- Enhanced security: SD-WAN integrates robust security features such as encryption, secure tunnels, and firewalls to protect data and communications.
How SD-WAN functions within modern network architectures
SD-WAN operates by decoupling the control plane from the data plane, allowing for centralized management and dynamic traffic routing.
Here’s a closer look at how SD-WAN functions:
- Centralized control plane: The control plane is the brain of the SD-WAN solution. It is responsible for managing network policies, monitoring network performance, and making decisions about traffic routing. By centralizing these functions, SD-WAN provides a holistic view of the network, enabling administrators to manage it more effectively.
- Dynamic traffic routing: Based on predefined policies and real-time performance metrics, SD-WAN can dynamically route traffic across the most efficient path. This ensures optimal performance for critical applications and reduces congestion on the network.
- Application awareness: Related to the above, SD-WAN solutions are application-aware, meaning they can identify and prioritize traffic based on the needs of specific applications. For instance, video conferencing and VoIP calls can be prioritized over less critical traffic to ensure clear, uninterrupted communication.
- Enhanced security measures: Security is a fundamental component of SD-WAN architecture. SD-WAN solutions typically include features such as encryption, secure tunneling, and integrated security services like firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention systems. These measures protect data as it travels across the network and prevent unauthorized access.
- Simplified deployment and management: Deploying and managing SD-WAN is significantly simpler than traditional WAN solutions. SD-WAN solutions often come with zero-touch provisioning, allowing new sites to be brought online quickly and easily. The centralized management console provides a single interface for monitoring and managing the entire network, simplifying operations and reducing the burden on IT staff.
The role of SD-WAN in enhancing connectivity and network performance
SD-WAN plays a pivotal role in enhancing connectivity and network performance for businesses. Here’s how:
- Reliable connectivity: By leveraging multiple types of underlay transport options (MPLS, broadband, LTE), SD-WAN ensures reliable connectivity. If one link fails, traffic can be automatically rerouted to another available path, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous access to critical applications.
- Optimized performance: SD-WAN optimizes network performance by prioritizing traffic and selecting the best paths based on real-time conditions. This reduces latency, packet loss, and jitter, leading to a better user experience and more efficient use of network resources.
- Compatibility with Enhanced Internet: Enhanced Internet can be used in tandem with SD-WAN to create the best-performing conditions for cloud-based traffic. Where SD-WAN prioritizes your application traffic over the best path, if that chosen path is the best of a “poor” series of options the application performance is still sub-optimal. Expereo’s Enhanced Internet ensures SD-WAN always has the best performing network path as it uses AI technology to constantly review the performance of the entire Internet and then select the best performing network path for traffic.
Enhanced Internet combined with SD-WAN also benefit cross-continental traffic, typically cloud-based applications located in Data Centers around the world, by creating “MPLS-like” connectivity over long distances so that an organization can still get the performance of MPLS but on an Internet-based network.
- Scalability: As businesses grow and expand their operations, SD-WAN provides the scalability needed to support new locations and users. Adding new sites to the network is straightforward, thanks to zero-touch provisioning and centralized management.
- Improved cloud access: With the increasing reliance on cloud-based applications, having a network that can efficiently connect to cloud services is crucial. SD-WAN optimizes traffic to and from the cloud, ensuring fast, reliable access to cloud-based applications and services. With Forward Error Correction, SD-WAN can ensure better application performance on even poor-performing Internet, ensuring our teams stay connected and productive.
- Enhanced user experience: By prioritizing critical applications and optimizing traffic routes, SD-WAN improves the overall user experience. Employees can access the applications and data they need without delays, leading to increased productivity and satisfaction.
Real use cases for SD-WAN
SD-WAN ensures flexibility, security, and scalability, making it an effective solution for modern enterprises looking to:
- Enable cloud adoption.
- Enhance application performance.
- Streamline operations across diverse and geographically dispersed environments.
For cloud-first strategies, SD-WAN optimizes cloud traffic for reliable access to applications.
And it's ideal for remote and distributed workforces, providing secure connectivity across locations. In this way, multi-branch enterprises benefit from cohesive, easy-to-manage networks, and cost-conscious organizations can reduce expenses compared to MPLS without sacrificing performance.
Go faster to the future with Managed SD-WAN from Expereo
In conclusion, SD-WAN is a game-changing technology that addresses the limitations of traditional WAN solutions. By offering increased agility, cost savings, enhanced performance, improved security, and simplified management, SD-WAN is revolutionizing the way businesses approach network connectivity.
By partnering with Expereo for your SD-WAN deployment and network management, you can navigate the complexities of network transformation with confidence.
Get in touch today to discuss your connectivity needs.