SD-WAN is not a new concept that is becoming trendy right now, but is actually something that has been there for a while! (Remember the iWAN days?) – Also there will not be something new or exciting that you maybe have not seen before.

My idea is to keep analyzing the technology and off course have the ability to use it in a lab environment as well as in a Production environment.

SD-WAN most common terminology

The following is an attempt to provide with the terms I have heard the most, but reality is that some of these terms are used by the different manufacturers interchangeably

• Mangement Dashboard
• Orchestrator
• Edge Device
• Hub and Spoke
• Mesh Topologies
• Overlay Network
• Underlay Network

The Conditions that an SD-WAN solution needs to fulfill

• Ability to agregate multiple WAN connections (MPLS, Internet, etc…)
• Ability to efficiently/automatically decide which is the best path to use to go from point A to point B (This is also true for cloud applications)
• Ability to have a single place to manage the majority if not everything related to the SD-WAN Infrastructure
• Ability to integrate with third party services, like Firewalls, VPN Optimization and other services.

Based on the Services we are taking a look at in this series, you can tell that there is a correlation between all of them. The beauty of the technology is that is very fun to see the same idea replicated from different interfaces

SD-WAN Main use Cases

• Branch Zero Touch Deployment
  • This one is looking mainly to ship a box to the branch and connect it to the WAN Provider and be done with it
• Application Control
  • This includes mainly the ability to see what applications are being used, and for that to have a meaning, the SDWAN Management interface will create Policies/QoS based on the usage of such application.
• Path Control
  • Where you want your critical applications to go, Internet 1? what about your users on Netflix or Youtube, Internet 2? – It may sound so early 2000’s but the reality is that we still see companies not knowing what to do in these situations – And this should not be the case!
• Failover, Anyone?
  • I’m sure you can relate, Internet 1 is down, how about we have Internet 2 servicing our entire computers/servers fleet

What to look forward to?

Completing the series has been mostly interesting and educative, I should expect to complete the series by the end of the month, the next post is going to be based on a Lab using VeloCloud, stand by!

About the Author:

Andres Sarmiento, CCIE # 53520 (Collaboration)
With more than 13 years of experience, Andres is specialized in Unified Communications and Collaboration technologies. Consulted for several companies in South Florida, also Financial Institutions on behalf of Cisco Systems. Andres has been involved in high-profile implementations including Cisco technologies; such as Data Center, UC & Collaboration, Contact Center Express, Routing & Switching, Security and Hosted IPT Service provider infrastructures.

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