Imagine you are a traffic cop in the middle of a busy intersection. Your job is to manage the flow of traffic to ensure the most efficient movement with the least amount of congestion. You have to constantly adjust your priorities depending on stoplight timing, the number of vehicles, and vehicle speeds.
Not all traffic is created equal, either. An emergency vehicle or ambulance gets priority and should bypass normal traffic.
A software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) operates in many ways like that traffic cop by managing network traffic to ensure network efficiency and performance. Because not all network traffic is equal, SD-WAN gives special treatment to high-priority applications to optimize performance.
Whenever an application launches, SD-WAN traffic steering automatically finds the most efficient pathway to route traffic. Network traffic is load-balanced across all available WANs based on application priorities using real-time routing.
What Is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network and virtual architecture that simplifies IT infrastructure control and management. SD-WAN solutions connect users to applications securely and reliably while improving application performance.
Besides connecting internal networks and devices, SD-WAN also enables utilization of diverse network circuits. SD-WAN makes it possible to use broadband, dedicated internet access (DIA), and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) across public and private clouds, hybrid clouds, or multi-cloud environments.
SD-WAN Benefits
By replacing branch routers, SD-WAN solutions simplify the infrastructure, giving IT teams greater control and providing centralized management of edge devices. Using a policy-based framework, IT admins get both the big picture and granular visibility into applications, devices, networks and users. SD-WAN enables IT teams to define configurations across the network, including branches, data centers, cloud connections, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) connectivity.
SD-WAN benefits organizations by enabling application-aware routing and prioritizing traffic to achieve optimal performance.
Application-Aware Routing
LOGIX SD-WAN solutions apply application intelligence to connectivity. Application intelligence understands the paths applications need and the amount of bandwidth required to deliver a quality user experience, eliminating the need for IT to constantly tweak networks and segregate bandwidth for different uses.
Application-aware routing performs a constant balancing act as applications compete for resources. Regardless of your network capacity and connectivity, SD-WAN finds the most efficient pathway.
SD-WAN does more than just route traffic based on application needs, however. SD-WAN employs context-based network and security policies to automatically route traffic based on applications, devices, locations and users.
The LOGIX SD-WAN solution chooses optimal paths based on an algorithmic score that measures parameters such as:
- Round-trip time
- Round-trip delay
- Jitter
- Packet loss
- Application performance
- Traffic-flow analysis.
A “network experience” calculation determines how apps are performing along with the network to deliver application-aware routing mapped to the user experience.
SD-WAN solutions monitor the health of each link in the network. When links become congested, the software automatically diverts traffic to alternate routes that are less congested. Load balancing optimizes response times by distributing traffic across the WAN and provides resiliency in the event of a link failure.
Application Prioritization and QoS
Dynamic routing means prioritizing applications based on Qualify of Service (QoS) thresholds. The LOGIX SD-WAN solution comes with standard configurations that generally meet customer needs right out of the box.
The solution routes applications based on QoS thresholds and the class of service needed. There are four different classes of service that most businesses deploy:
Real-time
Customers generally want real-time applications that require high throughput and low latency to get top priority such as video conferencing, VoIP and instant messaging.
Business Critical
Business-critical applications keep the business running. Downtime for these applications can have both immediate and long-term negative impacts – for example, e-commerce sites or financial systems where downtime causes a loss of revenue. These business-critical apps receive priority over normal network traffic.
Low priority
Traffic in the low-priority category would include things such as system backups or other applications that are not time-sensitive.
Default
Everything else falls into the default category.
Easy to Configure
The LOGIX SD-WAN solution is easy to set up. Once installed, it works right out of the box without any complex configurations. You can choose to let the system handle traffic decisions or customize routing and priorities to your unique needs. Either way, system admins have complete visibility into application and network performance.
SD-WAN Improves Application Performance
By prioritizing real-time and business-critical applications, SD-WAN can provide a high-quality experience for users. By dynamically directing traffic to the best available pathway, users get a seamless experience, regardless of the chosen path.
The LOGIX SD-WAN Secure Solution
LOGIX SD-WAN Secure is a secure access service edge (SASE) solution that provides flexibility, control and ease of use for comprehensive and secure network operations. From a single platform, you can ensure optimal performance across the WAN and deliver secure SD-WAN services to branch offices, locations and remote workers.
Contact LOGIX Fiber Networks today to request a quote for SD-WAN Secure.