Has the term SD-WAN lost meaning, as the Cloud has?
In a previous article, I mentioned my opinion that just as the “cloud” has become a vague catch-all term for any sort of easily accessible internet service, so too has the hybrid wan. In that article, I suggested substituting the term “SD-WAN,” since using both terms spreads confusion. However, I soon received an email from Scott Pickett, suggesting […]
SD-WAN Security: Vulnerabilities Found in SD-WAN Appliances
In a rush to capitalize on the SD-WAN market opportunity, some SD-WAN vendors seem to be playing fast and loose with their appliances. At a recent customer site of ours, Nirvik Nandy, CISO of SASE Experts and CEO of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy, and I collaborated on a security analysis of SD-WAN architectures. We […]
Service Insertion—Why It’s So Important
Enterprises often need to spin up new network services, but doing so can be difficult. While SD-WAN in general makes this task easier, the real magic happens when you use service insertion and service chaining. What Are Service Insertion and Chaining? Service insertion allows the SD-WAN appliance to use predefined policies to identify and steer selected traffic to and from a device […]
Hybrid WANs vs SD-WANs
People often use the terms “hybrid WAN” and “SD-WAN” interchangeably – and that’s a mistake. Hybrid WANs deal with the underlay; SD-WANs deal with the overlay. And the two aren’t mutually exclusive, either: You can build an SD-WAN that’s also a hybrid WAN, and you can build a hybrid WAN without an SD-WAN. Hybrid WANs interconnect […]
The Four Metrics For VoIP and Wide Area Networking
Quality of Service or QoS impacts the quality data traffic over a network. It also refers to the ability to prioritize certain types of traffic on an IP network. In the case of VoIP, this typically means prioritizing voice traffic at a higher level than other forms of traffic such as data so that voice traffic will not […]
Security a Driver to Use SD-WAN
One of the more significant themes to come out of yesterday’s SD-WAN Virtual Summit by Viptela was the importance of security. We touched on the security risks SD-WANs pose in our recent Network World blog where we explained the different approaches to implementing security within the SD-WAN. Security came up several times during the virtual tradeshow, perhaps nowhere more prevalent than in the […]
Will networks and security converge in 2017?
The start of a new year is always a good time for bold predictions. And whereas some might have searched the stars to predict the presidential election and others may attempt to divine the winner of the Super Bowl (I’ll save you the trouble – the Patriots), we here at SD-WAN Experts satisfied ourselves with something far […]
Supplier Management Disrupts SD-WANs – Here’s Why
In a recent blog on Network World, I spoke about the impact SD-WANs have on supplier management. It’s a pressing issue that anyone evaluating SD-WANs must consider. John Spiegal, the IS/Communications Manager at Columbia Sportswear, just sent me a recent SDXCentral article that pointed out a few additional alternatives Multiple Paths: The Key to SD-WAN Availability One […]
Why your maximum throughput is less than your bandwidth.
This posting is more technical than most on this blog. It was motivated by a recent customer that has a 6Mbps MPLS network connecting Boston to China. The network was been performing very well. But then they recently started using FTP to transfer files and they could not attain anywhere close to 6Mbps of throughput. This entry […]
SD-WAN Services – Are they for you?
Our recent blog at Network World examined the SD-WAN marketplace, posing the question “Should you buy an SD-WAN service?” Like so many technologies, the decision isn’t as simple as “yes” or “no,” but one that’s dependent on your organizations particular needs and challenges. And make no mistake, the chances are there’s a vendor and an offering out there that’s […]
