Improved application performance boosts employee productivity and customer satisfaction. By using SD-WAN to reduce reliance on expensive MPLS circuits and send lower-priority data over cheaper public internet connections, companies can also save on network costs and increase bandwidth efficiency and performance.
Ensure the right amount of bandwidth is allocated to business-critical applications. This requires proper configuration of routing and implementation of virtual LANs (VLANs).
1. Scalability
For organizations with many remote locations, SD-WAN can help them manage their networks more efficiently. It optimizes applications on multiple available connections and delivers a high-performance experience to users wherever they are. It can improve resilience and secure connections between sites and public or private cloud platforms.
It supports multiple types of WAN transport, including commodity broadband or 3G/4G/5G, MPLS, LTE, and more, with security and quality of service (QoS) controls. In addition, it provides centralized management for firewalls and routers, virtual private networks (VPNs), and remote clients, minimizing labor costs.
To maximize the benefits of SD-WAN, working with a vendor that offers solutions as a managed service is essential. These solutions are based on an overlay model and consist of network edge devices that plug into the organization’s existing WAN links. These devices communicate with a central controller over a secure connection. The controller then determines traffic prioritization and enables businesses to scale to meet their growing needs. It also monitors performance and troubleshoots problems for business-critical applications.
The ability to flexibly scale SD-WAN enables IT teams to optimize network performance for improved end-user experience and business operations. This scalability helps to avoid network bottlenecks and congestion periods that can degrade application performance.
Visibility into SD-WAN performance enables administrators to enforce and optimize traffic priority policies. This ensures high-priority applications receive preferred bandwidth to meet SLA requirements and deliver a great user experience.
SD-WAN also eliminates packet loss, jitter, and latency issues that can negatively impact application performance. With these problems stopped WAN links can operate fully to enable more excellent reliability.
2. Flexibility
A robust network design that supports flexibility can improve business agility. A flexible network can reroute traffic in case of link degradation and prioritize applications sensitive to latency and packet loss. This allows your employees to focus on their jobs and customers without worrying about the impact of network disruptions.
Traditional WAN architectures backhaul data and applications from branch offices to the central data center over private networks (MPLS, VPN), resulting in costly bandwidths. Backhauling also increases latency and leads to a poor user experience for onsite and remote workers. With SD-WAN, organizations can use internet broadband or wireless WAN (4G/LTE) links between branches and the data center to save costs.
In addition, an SD-WAN solution’s software-based secure tunnels enable users and devices to connect directly to software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This simplifies deployment, cuts costs, and enables direct communication with the cloud. The result is higher security, performance, and QoE than legacy MPLS links.
3. Security
In addition to securely connecting to public and private cloud applications, SD-WAN solutions providers help businesses improve their productivity and user experience. By dynamically routing traffic to the best available connection, SD-WAN can prioritize critical applications and deliver optimal performance. It can also help reduce costs by offloading traffic from costly MPLS circuits to broadband internet connections.
Traditional network architectures like MPLS fall short because backhauling data from branch offices to a centralized security gateway introduces latency and impairs application performance. In contrast, SD-WAN creates direct tunnels from branches to public or private enterprise clouds and a hybrid WAN using cost-effective internet connections, eliminating backhauling and improving performance.
SD-WAN provides flexibility and ease of management by decoupling the logical topology from the hardware. The centralized control function can manage overlay and underlay networks and apply policies. SD-WAN appliances obey operational regulations passed down by the central controller to simplify network management, increase security, and optimize service delivery. This also eliminates the need for complicated and costly hardware upgrades.
4. Automation
Network automation enables businesses to take control of repetitive network tasks. This minimizes labor needs, boosting network reliability and stability. Network automation software leverages programmable logic to configure, test, deploy, and operate physical and virtual devices across the enterprise network. It also provides centralized management and visibility.
SD-WAN enables businesses to establish local internet breakouts, which bring SaaS and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) applications directly over the internet. This helps reduce costs, improve application performance, and enhance the user experience by reducing or eliminating latency.
Conclusion
Unlike traditional WAN architectures, which backhaul traffic to a central gateway, SD-WAN automatically directs all applications over cost-effective public internet connections. This makes the network more agile and responsive to application performance.
Additionally, an SD-WAN can identify issues like circuit outages and network congestion before they slow response times, routing traffic around them. This helps prevent productivity loss and costly downtime due to a poor internet connection. An SD-WAN with a built-in network monitoring system can detect these problems and make adjustments automatically, making them easier for IT teams to handle.