SD WAN refers to Software-Defined Wide Area Networking. It’s a fairly recent technology that simplifies and enhances a company’s wide area network. This post explains what SD WAN is and discusses the benefits it delivers.
To be thorough, let’s begin with the definition of Wide Area Networking. In contrast to local area networks (LANs), which connect computers, servers, and other hardware within a limited area — usually within a given office — a wide area network connects multiple offices with the corporate headquarters.
Imagine a clothing retailer with hundreds of stores and dozens of regional warehouses. Among other core business needs, this clothier needs an easy and reliable way to manage inventory, so online customers won’t have to face constant out-of-stock situations. An ERP software system handles the processing aspect, while a wide area network connecting all its facilities provides the path for data to flow.
Let’s also assume that the retailer is laser-focused on giving its customers the most exceptional customer experience (CX) possible. After all, having a positive CX directly drives increased sales and lifetime customer value. As part of the company’s plan, it needs to roll out a new, AI-powered virtual agent that helps customers choose the most suitable color, size, and style of clothing.
If the company is using a traditional WAN, it will have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of routers that control the flow of data. Each of those routers “knows” how to route traffic, but that’s only because the IT staff has already created what’s known as a “control plane” for each router. They’ve done this by programming those devices with rules that define how data should flow from one part of the WAN to another. Without that programming, the WAN could not function.
However, in this example, the company discovers (much to its chagrin) that it will need to reprogram all those hundreds of routers to establish the rules for handling data produced by their new AI agent. With those routers spread across the nation or even the world, the reprogramming effort will take a great deal of time and effort. Weeks wouldn’t be unusual, especially because reprogramming those routers means typing in numerous new commands, one at a time, into each device. It’s a labor-intensive job, it’s error prone, and a single typo could take days or weeks to track down.
However, a software-defined WAN simplifies the reprogramming job. Rather than sending technicians out to reprogram each router, a software-defined WAN enables a technician to reprogram all the routers from a single location. In other words, a technician can set up the control plane for the entire wide area network without leaving his or her chair. The control plane can be set up at the corporate headquarters, although many companies are turning to managed service providers (MSPs) and cloud computing firms to host their control plane.
What Benefits Does an SD WAN Deliver?
Cost Savings. Until SD WAN technology became available, wide area networks used various technologies to connect their outlying offices to corporate headquarters. These included Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, and MPLS, which refers to Multi-Protocol Label Switching. MPLS has been the go-to solution in recent years, but it’s quite expensive, especially considering that every remote office needs an MPLS circuit. Further, MPLS has been available through national carriers that often forced customers to wait while their corporate bureaucracy took its time responding to customer requests for changes to their service levels.
So, while MPLS is reliable and gives IT managers control over the quality of service (QoS), SD WAN can use ordinary broadband circuits. Doing so slashes the excessive costs of running an MPLS-based wide area network to a small fraction of those costs. Bandwidth costs can plummet as much as 70 percent. [1, 2]
Better Performance from Applications. Applications each need a circuit that can meet the needs of the application. For example, video and voice communication are both sensitive to jitter and packet loss. SD WAN can monitor latency and calculate loss metrics for every circuit, which gives IT managers the ability to assign each application to the optimum path.
Security. SD WANs encrypt data as it flows from point to point, which means bad actors cannot tap into a circuit to eavesdrop. SD WANs also divide the WAN into segments so that users cannot access data for which they are not authorized.
Further, a proper SD WAN implementation provides a security policy that protects on-premises assets, mobile users, remote offices, resources in the cloud, and other endpoints. Using a single set of security tools across all these dramatically simplifies security and makes it more effective than having multiple security policies for each.
Summary
Our clothing retailer, by adopting SD WAN, becomes more agile by simplifying its network policies. It can enjoy better, less costly performance by letting the SD WAN intelligently establish multiple paths that accommodate the needs of various applications. According to Michael Stachowski, President of Extended Office Solutions, “SD WAN transforms the way we think about multi-location companies, their access to the Internet, the cloud, inter-office communication, and access for mobile users. There has never been a technology that has such an impact across so many areas. Is it any wonder that companies everywhere are moving to SD WAN?”
At Extended Office Solutions, we provide organizations of all sizes with reliable, custom-tailored technology solutions. We offer a comprehensive suite of telecommunication products, services, and data networking solutions, including SD WAN that provides an immediate network performance improvement over standard Internet connections. Our platform allows you to control all your headquarters and branch offices in a single portal. With SD WAN, you gain plain and simple visibility to your mission-critical applications, bandwidth usage, and potential security threats.
SD-WAN provides customers a way to improve their connectivity by using software to control network traffic. Analytics provides the insight needed to make changes to policy based on intelligent reporting. There is no more wondering why your network is slow. You can ensure that your cloud-based applications have the proper bandwidth and priority.
Learn more at our SD WAN page, or contact us directly to speak to one of our networking experts.
