Differences between hybrid WAN and SD-WAN, wansd-wan differences

Differences between hybrid WAN and SD-WAN, wansd-wan differences

The concepts of hybrid WAN and SD-WAN are often misused, and some people think they can replace each other. Hybrid WAN is a way of routing traffic across multiple connection paths, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) Simplifies WAN management by centrally managing and providing business policy orchestration and security. These two methods have evolved into an important technology that supports the changing network needs of the cloud era.

Networks in the cloud age

The Private Data Center carries most applications, the network uses Multi-Protocol Label conversion (MPLS), and all traffic is sent to the data center of the application security protocol.

Currently, most of the traffic is destined to be transmitted over the network. The global public cloud service revenue increased by 2017 in 18.5%, reaching $260.2 billion, higher than $2016 in 219.6 billion. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and software as a service (SaaS) applications (such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce.com, ServiceNow, and Box) are now an important part of critical business infrastructure.

In the cloud era, enterprises require higher network elasticity, flexibility, and cost effectiveness. According to Gartner's Technology Overview for SD-WAN report, "from the perspective of price and performance, public cloud computing makes the traditional enterprise WAN architecture unsatisfactory ."

For cloud applications, the traditional MPLS return technology will lead to performance degradation and network congestion unacceptable for business performance. As consumption increases, MPLS costs also increase. As one of the solutions to this problem, some enterprises have opened up Backdoors that can directly access the Internet on the firewall. Although this method can improve performance, it brings unpredictable security risks.

Other changes, such as the network congestion caused by the new OTT application of video streams, and the encrypted application makes it difficult to determine the business priority of the application, so all data is processed in the same way, no matter how critical they are. Finally, with the continuous adoption of IOT, a large amount of data is collected, stored, and often analyzed at the edge. These factors have a profound impact on today's networks.

Hybrid WAN Development

Hybrid WAN routes traffic over multiple connection paths, taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of their respective links. By selecting the path, hybrid WAN can establish or redirect the selected business and application delivery based on the business policy and service quality. When the performance declines or suffers an interruption, traffic can be routed along the backup path.

Hybrid Wan uses Internet broadband and traditional MPLS for path selection. As shown in, internet broadband and MPLS both have their inherent advantages and disadvantages. The Internet bandwidth is ideal for direct access to cloud traffic and additional performance. Unlike MPLS, it can achieve additional performance without several months of delay. However, Internet bandwidth is less secure and service quality is poor. Therefore, it may not be suitable for internal financial applications and applications that require high-quality services, such as WebEx.

Shamus McGillicuddy of the Enterprise Management Association said: "The Future of the Wan is hybrid. Most enterprises will operate on Public and Private connection networks, and application traffic will promote the choice of these connections ."

SD-WAN simplifies hybrid WAN Management

Managing a hybrid Wan is not simple. The command line interface (CLI) is manual and time-consuming and error-prone. Each device needs to be configured separately, or the administrator can write a custom script to configure and update complex network policies.

For example, if a retailer with 500 Remote stores wants to deploy a new video application, each vro requires 10 new command line codes (5000 command lines in total ). On average, it takes 30 seconds to execute each command, and a total of one week to execute changes and launch new applications. If an error occurs, the administrator needs to check each line in the 5000 line of code. The script can help, but it also brings more complexity and increases the error rate.

Instead of using the CLI, The SD-WAN provides administrators with a centralized management portal to implement business-defined rules throughout the organization. According to a Forrester survey, most network administrators want to centrally monitor and manage traffic and remotely configure the WAN.

SD-WAN abstracts network device management from devices, allowing network administrators to create business and security policies and deploy in Wide Area Networks, wireless/wired LAN, and cloud environments. This level of control improves IT and business efficiency and reduces operation management costs by about 20%. In addition to reducing operating costs, enterprises also use SD-WAN to improve application performance, directly optimize cloud connections, and improve network security.

Choosing the right SD-WAN solution helps ensure application performance meets service levels and user expectations, and integrated WAN optimization reduces network congestion and latency, accelerating performance for business-critical applications, integrated user, device, and infrastructure monitoring can help IT administrators quickly diagnose and solve complex performance problems in local, cloud, and mobile applications.

With SD-WAN, enterprises can connect directly and securely to SaaS and cloud platforms. The Administrator defines policies to directly connect to SaaS applications through broadband connection, so as to optimize performance and avoid the higher cost associated with MPLS. Applications built on AWS, Azure, or Google cloud can be connected through internet broadband VPN to ensure secure access.

Many SD-WAN solutions are embedded with firewall, user identity control, network segmentation, and other security features. Through Traffic subdivision, the network administrator can limit the attack surface and appropriately include visitor traffic.

Network modernization

By providing traffic routing options based on business needs, hybrid WAN can improve congestion, reduce costs, and improve performance. However, without the SD-WAN technology, it can be very troublesome to manage. SD-WAN solutions provide centralized management and coordination for hybrid WAN, further reducing operating costs and increasing flexibility. For these reasons, industry analyst IDC expects the SD-WAN market to grow to $8 billion as technology becomes mainstream by 2021.