Written by Practice Manager | Network and Security Services, Brandon Alexander
SD-WAN is all the buzz in the networking world these days. Gartner predicts that SD-WAN will become the De Facto option for enterprise WAN edge in the coming years. Router-based wan models are being replaced every day. With that, here are some features of SD-WAN that you should take advantage of in your environment.
1. Best Internet Breakout
This feature could be called ‘SD-Internet’ because it allows you to use the best internet circuit at any given moment. For example, if you are on a cloud-based Zoom/WebEx call, and have multiple internet circuits at your site, the best internet circuit will be chosen and continually checked (using factors such as latency, packet loss, etc.) with automatic failover built-in. Compare that to the current model where the backup circuit is only utilized when the primary circuit is hard down. The primary circuit could have a ‘brownout’ and the firewall/router would never failover. That equals unhappy users.
2. Direct to internet breakout:
Don’t add unnecessary latency to your zoom/office365 traffic by backhauling it through the data center. Give your users a better experience by sending that traffic directly out of the local branch. In an SD-WAN world, redirect that traffic based on ‘advanced matching capabilities’ such as application as opposed to legacy-based matching (e.g., oh great, Zoom just added a few hundred new IP addresses to their public IP list. I guess I have to manually add those to my firewall for my video conferencing not to suffer”).
3. UDP tunnels:
UDP tunnels give increased transfer speed compared to TCP tunnels. This is a known fact that most providers have implemented. Confirm you are using it!
4. Forward Error Correction:
Get rid of expensive private circuits between your sites and utilize less expensive internet circuits. Forward error correction is the secret sauce that provides you the ability to run packet-loss sensitive applications (e.g., VOIP) over these lower quality circuits.
5. SASE:
This one deserves a post of its own but let’s hit the high notes. Get a cloud-based firewall solution. This will enable all your employees, whether on-prem or remote, to have the same user experience. The employee web-based traffic will be tunneled to the cloud firewall. All the branch firewalls will no longer be needed as the SD-wan appliance (if not a firewall already) will tunnel to the cloud firewall.
Now is the time to move to SD-WAN. Contact Fidelus to see how you can make better use of your network.
If you have any questions about centralized SD-WAN, please contact Fidelus Technologies at 1.866.343.3587 or email solutions@fidelus.com.
Get in touch with Fidelus today to learn more.
