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Software Defined WAN, or SD-WAN, looks to be a theme of Network Field Day 9, with presenters such as CloudGenix and VeloCloud showing us their offerings. At first glance, SD-WAN sounds pretty compelling. Who wouldn’t want to slash their WAN OpEx? How do these solutions work, and do they have legs? I’m hoping to find out.
NB: I’ve lumped CloudGenix & VeloCloud together under the heading of SD-WAN. I’m not saying that they are the same though – I don’t yet have enough information about them to fully understand the similarities and differences. I’m sure I’ll know more in a couple of weeks!
What’s SD-WAN all about?
SD-WAN is about applying concepts of SDN to WAN networks. The goals are to increase flexibility and reduce WAN costs. This can be achieved through transport independence, dynamic path management, and better config management.
Historically we used private WAN circuits – leased lines, MPLS, etc. These had great SLAs, but the monthly costs were huge. The bandwidth was low, but guaranteed. Now that many places have access to high-speed Internet tails, it’s a lot harder to justify that cost. It’s very tempting to run IPSec VPNs across Internet links instead.
Those consumer Continue reading