Welcome to the Networking Bistro: Savoring the Flavours of SD-WAN
Imagine walking into a gourmet restaurant where the menu offers a delightful array of flavours, each crafted to perfection to suit your unique tastes. In the world of networking, SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Networking) serves up a similar experience, offering a variety of options to meet diverse business needs. Whether you prefer the on-premise control of Edge SD-WAN, the scalable flexibility of Cloud SD-WAN, or a desire for both… there’s a perfect dish for every palate. Join us as we explore the different flavours of SD-WAN and discover how Adaptiv Networks is revolutionizing the networking tablescape with its innovative solutions.
SD-WAN revolutionizes networking by decoupling the network’s control plane from the data plane, creating a virtual network (overlay) leveraging existing ISP links (underlays). This separation allows the centralized management of network traffic, optimizing the use of available bandwidth and improving overall application and service performance.
SD-WAN: Edge or Cloud
Edge SD-WAN is a fully on-premise solution where SD-WAN appliances are deployed at each enterprise location, creating a managed network that optimizes traffic flow between these sites. This approach ensures data remains within the enterprise’s private network, providing a high degree of control and security. However, this approach requires significant hardware investments and complex setups, limiting scalability and management complexity. Additionally, it provides limited benefits for Cloud services, as it doesn’t have the ability to aggregate traffic for external traffic.
Cloud SD-WAN combines on-premise and cloud components, using cloud-based controllers and gateways (Points of Presence) to extend the network’s reach. This hybrid approach enhances connectivity to cloud services and remote users, improving flexibility and scalability. Cloud SD-WAN offers easy deployment without significant hardware investments, allowing rapid scaling and centralized management. It provides seamless failover, ensuring continuous connectivity by dynamically rerouting traffic, unlike edge systems that may experience downtime.
So which option is the best? That depends on the use case and the organization. It may surprise you to learn that it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Adaptiv Networks: Edge AND Cloud
Adaptiv Networks delivers powerful SD-WAN solutions tailored to meet diverse business needs with its Adaptiv Connect and ELFIQ products.
Adaptiv SD-WAN is dynamic, scalable, cloud-managed solution offering high performance and seamless failover for site-to-site and cloud traffic. This solution is ideal for businesses seeking a flexible and reliable network infrastructure that can quickly adapt to changing demands and provide uninterrupted connectivity. Adaptiv Networks’ extensive gateway footprint allows client organizations to benefit from a globally available wide area network, at a fraction of the cost.
On the other hand, ELFIQ by Adaptiv Networks is engineered to handle large bandwidths and massive numbers of internal requests, making it the perfect business continuity solution for data centers. ELFIQ ensures that data centers can manage high traffic volumes efficiently, maintain optimal performance, and provide robust failover capabilities. This allows data centers to deliver consistent, high-quality service to their clients while maintaining operational resilience.
But wait, there’s more.
What if we could offer the best of both words, into one single deployment?
Split Tunneling: Changing the Game
Adaptiv SD-WAN stands out with its unique ability to perform split tunneling, allowing the creation of an overlay to encrypt and protect mission-critical or sensitive traffic while breaking out non-critical traffic like video streaming, gaming, or browsing locally.
Indeed, Adaptiv offers a tailored solution for traffic sensitive to interruptions, latency, and network instability, such as voice, video conferencing, and file transfers. By directing critical traffic sensitive to interruptions, latency, and network instability (such as voice, video conferencing, and file transfers) through the Adaptiv overlay, businesses can ensure consistent performance and reliability even in the face of intermittent outages.
Meanwhile, less critical traffic, which is less susceptible to suffering from such disruptions, still benefits from the same level of active-active link redundancy and failover technologies provided by ELFIQ.
This dual approach combines the strengths of both Adaptiv and ELFIQ, offering the best of both worlds: flexibility, efficiency, and cost savings opportunities. Businesses can optimize their network resources, prioritize mission-critical applications, and maintain seamless connectivity across their operations, enhancing productivity and user experience.
Use Cases
The three following examples offer another perspective into SD-WAN architecture, benefiting from Adaptiv’s flexible design. In all three cases, end users have access to best-in-class SD-WAN, both at the edge, and the cloud, and can realize substantial savings on the cost of connectivity and infrastructure.
Retail: Prioritizing Transactions
A nationwide retail chain requires a scalable network solution for its digital transformation. With Adaptiv SD-WAN, the chain can rapidly turn up new stores and seamlessly connect them to the Adaptiv Connect Network of gateways. Centralized management simplifies oversight, while bi-directional QoS prioritizes transaction and point-of-sale traffic, ensuring smooth processing. To avoid bottlenecks especially during peak shopping periods, other types of traffic coming from employees and guests are not sent through the tunnel, but broken out and balanced on the local Internet, enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Corporate Offices: Prioritizing Communications
An accountant firm, spread across various cities, relies on Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) for seamless communication. With Adaptiv SD-WAN, UCaaS traffic receives top priority, ensuring high-quality voice and video calls. Split tunneling segregates non-critical traffic, preventing congestion that could disrupt essential communication tools. This streamlined approach enhances collaboration among team members and fosters efficient client interactions, improving productivity and satisfaction. Adaptiv SD-WAN guarantees reliable communication channels vital for the firm’s success.
Hotels: Prioritizing Reservations
An upscale hotel was struggling with intermittent connectivity. This caused issues, especially for guests trying to access the hotel Wi-Fi, and at the time of checking in. In the world of hotels, guest satisfaction is key, and failed transactions are not a great way to achieve 5-star reviews. With Adaptiv SD-WAN, the hotel can now prioritize reservation system traffic, ensuring that bookings and back-office processes remain uninterrupted. At the same time, guest Wi-Fi and employee traffic, while important, consumes a lot more bandwidth but doesn’t require the same level of seamless operation. As such, it still benefits from blazing fast link failover, providing a positive experience for both staff and guests.
Conclusion
As businesses navigate the complexities of digital transformation, the need for flexible, scalable, and cost-effective network solutions becomes paramount. Adaptiv Networks’ SD-WAN offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for a variety of network environments, combining the best features of both Edge and Cloud SD-WAN architectures. With unique features like split tunneling and a focus on seamless failover, active-active link load balancing, and dynamic traffic management, Adaptiv Networks empowers businesses to achieve their connectivity goals and thrive in a digital-first world. Download our eBook on Comparing SD-WAN Paradigms to learn more.