The Definition, Advantages and Applications of SD-WAN

The development momentum of SD-WAN has been strong in recent years, therefore caused the enthusiasm of customers to rise continuously. According to IDC agency forecasts, from 2019 to 2023, the global SD-WAN infrastructure market will grow at a compound growth rate of 30.8%, and market revenue will reach US>25 billion by 2023. What is it that makes SD-WAN have such a broad market prospect? Let us check it in the following contexts.

Definition & Advantages

First, let's stick to the definition of SD-WAN. It refers to a wide-area software-defined network, which is a service formed by applying SDN (Software-Defined Network) technology to wide-area network scenarios. This service can be used to connect corporate networks, data centers, Internet applications, and cloud services across a wide geographic range.

The original intention of developing SD-WAN is to save budgets, improve transmission efficiency and management convenience. Before the advent of SD-WAN, the main method of handling company network traffic was for branch offices to contact the company's data center or head office through leased lines, usually using MPLS. This approach accounts for about 80% of the company's network traffic, where WAN routers are hardware-based, proprietary, expensive, and relatively inflexible. At that time, domestic MPLS with 20M bandwidth cost about 644 a month in rent.

Why does the company insist on using MPLS even though it is so expensive? The main reason is that it allows strict control of routers and can provide safe and reliable quality of service. In contrast, SD-WAN can achieve the same functions but much more cost-effective. There are currently public cases showing that SD-WAN can save 70% of network costs by replacing MPLS.

SD-WAN not only has the advantage of budget-saving, but more importantly, SD-WAN is more flexible and manageable.

First of all, SD-WAN can create a mature private network, thereby increase the ability to dynamically share network bandwidth, and realize central control, zero-touch configuration, integrated analysis, and on-demand circuit configuration.

In addition, SD-WAN allows IT personnel to centrally manage branch networks through a central management console, thus eliminating the need for physical access to WAN routers and saved the necessity of manual configuration by on-site IT personnel. This point shows that SD-WAN provides more visibility to the network.

This is mainly due to the "brain" of SD-WAN, which is the controller. It can dynamically adjust the upper layer network according to the real-time road conditions of the physical network and select a better quality underlay network. This controller is not only responsible for optimizing the line quality, but also the key to the deployment, operation and maintenance of the entire network. At the same time, it endows SD-WAN with features of zero-configuration, automation, visualization, and cloud management.

In general, the advantages of SD-WAN can be summarized into three categories: low cost, flexibility, and manageability:

• Low cost: SD-WAN technology can help reduce the overall cost of WAN connections in the following ways, including deleting or replacing expensive leased lines; allowing centralized management, and reducing the need for senior IT personnel.

• Flexibility: SD-WAN can choose between available transmissions, select the most suitable transmission for a given application at a given time, and add the ability to reroute applications to different transmissions during peak usage periods. It can also set policies to choose more expensive or cheaper transmissions as needed. The most critical point is that it is SD-WAN, not the operator, that controls bandwidth allocation. In addition, because the SD-WAN components are software-based, deployment is more flexible and the cycle time is short.

• Manageability: SD-WAN's central management console allows immediate global changes when needed, especially in the case of new security threats or cost control. In addition, SD-WAN also enhances network connectivity by using multiple transmission/network operators. If one of them fails, the other can be used, and this failover can be completed in a few seconds. Moreover, SD-WAN can also help improve security by encrypting all traffic or traffic categories.

Applications

• Branch Network Issues

The use of SD-WAN can effectively help the enterprise headquarters and branches to build star connections or full mesh connections to meet diverse access requirements with quick response.

Moreover, SD-WAN can use the public Internet to securely interconnect branch offices with distributed resources, while ensuring high performance for latency-sensitive and business-critical applications. SD-WAN solutions can support these functions through flexible and reliable connection methods, expansion of advanced routing functions, and load balancing across the organization's mesh VPN overlay, and provide a complete integrated security suite that can be end-to-end protected Data and progresses.

InHand`s upcoming SaaS cloud service platform is equipped with the latest SD-WAN technology to empower enterprises. It not only has intelligent flow rate limiting based on QoS to achieve precise control of uplink flow, but also has intelligent routing functions, support link backup and load balancing, and ensures the stability of the network.

• Budget Saving, Convenient Operation and Maintenance

InHand`s upcoming SaaS cloud service platform is equipped with the latest SD-WAN technology to empower enterprises. It not only has intelligent flow rate limiting based on QoS to achieve precise control of uplink flow, but also has an intelligent routing function, supports link backup and load balancing, and ensures the stability of the network.

The platform is currently being gradually updated. After the update, there is a traffic shaping function, which can realize the detection based on traffic applications and ensure the priority forwarding of important services. We sincerely invite you to stay tuned for the latest SaaS cloud service platform of InHand.