SD-WAN Could Solve Many of the Issues Currently Facing Wide Area Networks

The wide area network is in trouble.

Wide area networks (WANs) must now deal with multiple paths between on-premise and cloud resources, and somehow keep security high in the face of this varied path environment. Quality of service was hard to manage in the best of times, and now it is even harder with the mélange of heterogeneous networks. Holistic visibility in the network is challenged, and managing multiple network service level guarantees is a problem.

All is not doom for the humble WAN, however; virtualization might help.

Software-defined networking has emerged as a way to dynamically adjust and provision network resources, and this approach can help WAN architectures overcome or at least combat the numerous challenges they face.

So-called SD-WAN could help in at least six different ways.

First, SD-WAN could help with optimizing for both on-premise and cloud-based applications such as Office 365 and Salesforce.

A second way SD-WAN could help is through dynamic and automatic path selection to direct traffic. SD-WAN could choose between MPLS, Internet and other paths depending on the traffic and the needs such as service level guarantee requirements.

Third, SD-WAN could bring dynamic tunneling with the central control plane to allow for the secure backhaul of branch traffic to data centers in the cloud.

SD-WAN also could serve as a simple interface to zScaler or other cloud-based security services, allowing for local internet breakouts without requiring further investment in on-premise security appliances.

Fifth, it could help with inbound quality of service to manage local breakouts and protect against recreational internet usage during office hours.

Finally, SD-WAN has the potential to bring both deep and wide visibility to all assets connected to it, offering holistic insight on network usage, performance and integration with end-users.

Basically: SD-WAN has loads of potential, and it just might help WAN deployments from getting overwhelmed by the challenges it now faces in light of technology innovation and the cloud.