SD-WAN for enlightened

Sun Apr 16 20:13:59 UTC 2017

Hi,

I'm not sure if the buzzword SD-WAN is used to compensate for another
buzzword that got over-utilized (SDN) or it is a true 'new and improved'
way of doing things that has some innovation into it.

I heard different explanation from different vendors:

1) appliances (+ controller) placed in-line to put traffic in tunnels based
on policy, with some DPI and traffic tagging...(to do performance/policy
based routing) over an expensive link (MPLS) and a cheap one (broadband)
with some 'firewall-like' filtering capabilities.
2) same as above, with a flavor of 'machine learning' to find a pattern for
traffic to optimize utilization.
3) a controller that instantiates and tears down tunnels from 'classic
routers' based on external policies and Network based features to do
performance based routing over an expensive link (MPLS) and a cheap one
(broadband) with encryption.

Is the above a decent high-level summary?

Has anyone tried any of these solutions, any general feedback ?

Cheers,
Kim