Today, companies have a growing need for a reliable and secure way to connect their hybrid workforce. This is achieved through the use of SD-WAN.
The network architecture of SD-WAN ensures that all users have access to a single, fast, and reliable Internet connection. This helps to improve performance and reduce downtime.
Security
With the rise of cybercrimes and digital transformation, organizations must take all necessary steps to protect themselves against potential threats. One of the most critical security considerations is choosing the right WAN to send data.
Traditionally, most WANs were built on a hub-and-spoke model, with traffic passing from remote locations to the network hub via individual VPN connections. While this was a great way to provide a high level of connectivity, it also limited flexibility and security.
The benefits of SD-WAN architecture are that the data flows are centralized and granularly controlled. Network administrators coordinate security elements like IP security (IPsec), virtual private network (VPN) tunnels, next-generation firewalls (NGFW), and micro-segmentation of application traffic.
This centralized management enables businesses to monitor WAN performance through dashboards that provide aggregated views of WAN transport loss, latency, and jitter. Alarms and alerts can be triggered to help identify issues faster.
Another security advantage of SD-WAN is that it allows direct cloud access at the branch without backhauling traffic. This eliminates the need for a data center and significantly improves cloud application performance.
A correctly implemented SD-WAN can achieve a highly secure hybrid WAN that protects sensitive workloads from malware and other threats. This is an excellent option for small businesses that depend on the cloud and want to ensure their data is always safe.
Scalability
With SD-WAN, you can scale your network to meet your business needs. You can add or subtract sites, PoPs, and bandwidth as your business grows or shrinks.
Scalable networking is essential for your business to succeed in the modern world. With the rise of cloud computing and mobile technology, many companies have shifted away from centralized data centers to rely on applications available outside of the office. This can cause several issues for businesses that rely on traditional networking approaches.
When a network is scalable, it can handle more traffic and more connections without losing reliability or performance. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that want to maximize their productivity.
Another critical benefit of scalability is that it allows you to use different connectivity methods to access your network. This can include MPLS, 4G, or even a combination of those options.
You can also use redundancy to ensure that your network is always up and running. This is especially useful if you have multiple offices or employees working remotely.
You can keep your network running in a disaster when you have a high-availability configuration. This is because it enables you to leverage multiple transport methods that can quickly fail over to each other in case one fails.
Performance
SD-WAN provides next-level control and visibility into your business’s internet traffic. It can be configured to prioritize traffic based on business-driven policies and steer data packets over the best path, improving application performance by reducing network congestion.
Using deep packet identification, SD-WAN can inspect data packets to identify applications that consume bandwidth and control them with traffic-shaping policies. This prevents data loss and latency issues that can impact employee productivity.
Even if you’re away from the office, you can securely access your company’s servers and databases through an SD-WAN solution. It uses encryption to keep sensitive information from being intercepted by malicious hackers.
With this centralized control, you can also easily update your business’s network security policy in minutes from any location. That makes it easy to maintain your network without wasting time and effort, ensuring you always have the latest versions of essential software and security patches.
By combining these features, businesses can optimize their networking costs while providing next-level performance for their employees.
In addition, multi-location businesses can benefit from the centralized monitoring functionality of SD-WAN, which allows headquarters to view all application traffic at once and remotely address any issues that arise. This dramatically simplifies the administration of a WAN and reduces the need for costly hardware at each branch.
Flexibility
A Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is an excellent option for a multi-location business with many branches. It can connect them all and allow them to monitor the network from a central location.
This makes it much easier to manage your application networking settings and security, permissions, and other factors in one place rather than configure each router at every site. It also allows you to make changes remotely and digitally so they can be rolled out quickly in new areas.
Another key benefit of SD-WAN is its ability to use multiple circuit connections, including broadband internet, MPLS, LTE, or 4G. This means your network is always connected around the clock and can be configured to prioritize traffic via traffic-shaping policies.
With this, you can ensure that applications like video conferences or voice-over-Internet-protocol phone calls are not degraded by the constant volume of traffic on your WAN. You can also monitor traffic and manage your WAN in real time from anywhere.
This can significantly benefit businesses with remote workers who work in public places or need access to secure, private networks from home. It also lets you restrict traffic to specific apps and devices based on user profiles and keep track of what your users are doing online.
