The wide-area network (WAN) is rapidly replacing the LAN as the primary conduit for accessing business applications and data. The WAN enables branch offices and remote workers to connect to headquarters, and provides the Internet connectivity needed for cloud-based services. As a result, the WAN must be highly reliable and provide the bandwidth to support growing volumes of data.
Traditionally, WANs were designed using “leased line” circuits, which are highly reliable and secure but expensive and inflexible. In recent years, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services have become popular because they provide more bandwidth at less cost and are easier to scale.
However, you can’t beat broadband Internet in terms of cost, flexibility and ease of provisioning. That’s why more and more businesses are turning to broadband for WAN connectivity, particularly in remote offices.
There are three problems:
- The Internet is a “best effort” network that does not provide Quality of Service for voice, video and other interactive applications. Data packets can arrive late or out of order, resulting in garbled voice calls and “freeze frame” video conferences.
- The Internet is not secure. If you’re going to send business data back and forth over broadband links, you have to implement a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs can be cumbersome and aren’t foolproof in terms of security.
- The Internet is not as reliable as telco circuits. Internet outages happen fairly frequently, and can bring down your operations if you rely solely on broadband.
Ideally, an organization would combine MPLS, broadband Internet and even LTE wireless to get the perfect mix of cost, bandwidth, security and reliability. However, configuring the WAN router to differentiate and segment traffic across those various links would be highly complex. Plus, the configurations would have to be updated constantly as application profiles and business needs change.
Enter the software-defined WAN (SD-WAN). As the name implies, SD-WAN uses software to automate the configuration of WAN routers, making it possible to send traffic across a hybrid network based upon application requirements. What’s more, all connections are active and bandwidth is aggregated, creating one “fat pipe” that is highly reliable.
With SD-WAN you can reduce MPLS costs by relying more on broadband. The software is smart enough to know when broadband won’t provide an adequate connection, and routes that traffic to MPLS as needed. Routing is based on the current state of the network, providing the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. Management of the entire WAN is centralized, eliminating the need for IT staff to travel to remote offices for configuration changes.
The right SD-WAN even allows you to eliminate MPLS altogether, and just use a couple of broadband links. InSpeed Networks has developed an SD-WAN solution that “streamlines” the Internet to provide the Quality of Service needed for voice and video. It consists of a cloud service and a small onsite appliance. WAN traffic is prioritized and securely “tunneled” to the InSpeed cloud, where advanced software applies load-balancing and traffic-shaping techniques. InSpeed works over any type of WAN connection and makes it easy to establish secure site-to-site links connecting all locations.
SD-WAN delivers the agility, flexibility and simplified management organizations need to meet performance, security and availability demands. Let Verteks show you how the InSpeed SD-WAN solution reduces cost and complexity while securing and optimizing your WAN traffic.
