SD-WAN for enlightened

Doug Marschke doug at sdnessentials.com
Mon Apr 17 15:31:12 UTC 2017


Hello Kasper,

I will do my best to answer your SD-WAN question, but as you mentioned it is a buzzword that has a bit of confusion in its definitions.  I would say that a SD-WAN solution should have the following elements:

1.) Ability to manage multiple WAN connection and choose the path based on user and machine criteria (The Hybrid WAN)
2.) A controller to manage the polices and operations of the SD-WAN devices
3.) Analytics on the network and application level
4.) A software overlay that abstracts and secures the underlying networks

Currently there are a lot of solutions out there by many vendors.  Some do all of these and some a subset, so it make the landscape a bit confusing.   Lots of times vendors use SD-WAN when they are really just talking about Hybrid WAN (multiple connections) or WAN optimization.





Doug Marschke
CTO
www.sdnessentials.com
JNCIE-SP #41, JNCIE-ENT #3
415-902-5702 (cell)
415-340-3112 (office)

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Kasper Adel
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2017 1:14 PM
To: NANOG list <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: SD-WAN for enlightened

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




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