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10 Things to Look for in
Software Defined WAN
With SD WAN solutions coming of age, the
year 2016 is expected to be its break out year
SD-WAN promises
to lower costs and
reduce operational
complexity by
bor-rowing many of the
same paradigms of
SDN in data center
1hile Software
Defined
Net-working (SDN) in
data centers has garnered
all the attention over the last
few years, with products and
solutions from many
incum-bent network vendors and a
number of startups available
today, the year 2016 is
widely expected to be a
break-out year for Software
Defined Wide Area Network
(SD-WAN).
Though traditional
network-ing has always offered global
scalability and resiliency,
enterprises have struggled
with policy based routing,
centralized provisioning and
management. In addition,
distributed enterprises have
also struggled with long lead
times for MPLS deployment
and high bandwidth costs
which has made WANs
com-plex and expensive to build
and operate.
SD-WAN promises to lower
costs and reduce
operation-al complexity by borrowing
many of the same
para-digms of SDN in data center
to bring about easier
provi-sioning, intelligent path
selection, improved visibility
into application
perfor-mance and traffic analytics.
While enterprises have a
choice to deploy hybrid
WANs or even Internet as
WAN to optimize costs
inde-pendent of SD-WAN
tech-nologies, the incumbent
network vendors and
emerging SD-WAN vendors
are beginning to deliver on
the promises of centralized
provisioning, management
and visibility functionalities
that provide compelling use
cases for enterprises to
experiment with and
even-tually deploy SD-WAN in
production networks.
Compared to SDN in data
center where network must
be integrated with server
virtualization, L4-7 services,
automation and
orchestra-tion tools to be able to
pro-vide effective return on
investments, SD-WAN can
be considered as a pure
network solution with
mini-mal technology adjacencies.
Therefore, the success of
SD-WAN projects are
expected to be much higher.
What to look for
in SD-WAN
solutions
To gain agility and efficient utilization of WAN bandwidth through centralized provisioning and policy management, SD-WAN, as an integrated solution, must deliver on the following essential features and functionalities.
Device Form Factor & Controller Location
Edge devices should be available in both physical and virtual appli-ance formats. As enterprises are increasingly looking at the flexibil-ity provided by hardware and software decoupling, virtual appli-ances running on COTS hardware can be integrated with other virtu-alized network functions to create best-in-class network services at the WAN edge. Public cloud instances should be available to seamlessly extend the WAN boundaries of enterprises adopt-ing public cloud. The WAN controller should be available either on premise or on cloud to suit the needs of enterprises.
Routing Protocols
The solution must support com-monly deployed protocols such as BGP towards service provider networks and OSPF towards branch networks.
Overlay & Underlay Transport
The overlay network must support partial and full-mesh topologies. The underlay transport network support should include Ethernet, 3G/4G cellular interfaces and optional support legacy transport such as T1/E1.
Secure Multi-Tenancy
The solution must support stand-ards-based cryptography and must provide ability to create scalable network partitioning to support multi-tenancy requirements to address mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.
IPv6 Support
With the depletion of IPv4 address space, the SD-WAN solution must support IPv6 or at least have a clearly defined IPv6 roadmap. that enable better application performance under varying network conditions
Path Selection
Recognition or finger printing of common enterprise applications and the ability to create custom application signatures is essential to classify traffic flows and enable prioritized treatment of traffic based on link costs, network and application performance require-ments across all available WAN links. Policy based routing has been challenging in traditional networking, therefore, path quali-ty monitoring along with path symmetry are other key features
3
Integration into Existing Networks
The solution must offer integra-tion mechanisms into existing networks to enable phased migrations. Non- disruptive mechanisms (e.g., in-path appliances) are preferred which enable SD-WAN devices to be added into existing networks for proof-of-concept, pilots and phased migrations.
Service Insertion & Chaining
The solution must provide proven mechanisms for co-existence with other network functions such as firewall, WAN optimization and voice gateway services. Enterpris-es that have deployed legacy voice gateways on WAN devices must carefully evaluate their options as legacy voice support may not be available from newer vendors in the market.
Resiliency
It is important to understand what network functions are centralized to ensure traffic gets forwarded even during controller outages or non-reachability.
Provisioning, Management & Reporting
As the most important feature of SD-WAN, the solution must provide a single-pane-of glass management to enable zero touch provisioning, centralized policy management and enforce-ment, role-based access controls, application performance monitor-ing & diagnostics, SLA reportmonitor-ing, executive summaries & detailed views, traffic analytics, integration into NMS and SIEM tools, and finally, open interfaces for integra-tion into network automaintegra-tion and orchestration tools.
About the
author
Girish Chandangoudar has over 22 years of experience in Telecom and
Enterprise IT services spanning Internet Services, Network Operations, System Integration, Managed Services, Network Architecture and Techni-cal Pre-sales. He is currently a part of Global Infrastructure Services in Wipro and responsible for network practice development and delivery enablement. Girish has wide ranging interests in networking, collabora-tion, and data center and cloud technologies. He is currently developing SDN solutions relevant to Wipro's customers.
About Wipro
Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT) is a leading information technology, consulting and business process services company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better. Wipro delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of "Business through Technology.” By combining digital strategy, customer centric design, advanced analytics and product engineering approach, Wipro helps its clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, Wipro has a dedicated workforce of over 160,000, serving clients in 175+ cities across 6 continents. For more information, please visit wipro.com or write to us at
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES, DODDAKANNELLI, SARJAPUR ROAD, BANGALORE - 560 035, INDIA. TEL : +91 (80) 2844 0011, FAX : +91 (80) 2844 0256
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