Software Defined Network

Software Defined Network

SDWAN – Next Generation Enterprise WAN

The world is moving towards a truly global economy with the Internet at its core for Information, connectivity, services, collaboration, integration and Business.

Internet is also impacting IT WAN greatly as cloud technologies becoming more secured, global connectivity requirement is mandatory, customer and consumers prefer to access from anywhere, anytime, from any devices. This drives the network & security requirement crazy.

Organization traditional WAN is inefficient and costly to meet the growing needs of connectivity, performance, security, and manageability. SDWAN is the solution to address companies growing needs, remain feature rich and competitive in offerings. 

What is Software Defined WAN - SDWAN

In Nutshell, SDWAN solution provides overlay network over the physical WAN network consisting of point to point connection, MPLS Connection, and Internet connectivity (dedicated or business broadband) making underlay network as a commodity. Also, addressing lot of challenges of today’s Enterprise WAN.

SDWAN also provides centralized administration with a single application having a policy framework for

  • Provisioning, Configuration,
  • Monitoring Performance,  
  • Policy & SLA based routing,
  • Inbuilt Life Cycle Management
  • Zone-based Firewall Security and NAT
  • Troubleshooting of network infrastructure
  • Service chaining for specific traffic treatment
  • Automation - 3rd party applications integration using API
  • Support for legacy routing protocol and Gateway Redundancy Protocol like VRRP

How SDWAN Works

SDWAN architecture is simple and has mainly two components,
1. edge devices connected at each location and 2. centralized controller network managing all devices and provides centralized manageability. Edge SDWAN devices connect to controllers, download configuration, and join SDWAN fabric. Based on a policy defined overlay topology will be created, which can be Hub and Spoke, Full Mesh, Partial Mesh, Point to Point, direct Internet access only or customized.

The administrator can control the entire network from a centralized application using a browser. Policies can be pushed to multiple devices at the same time.

Following diagram depicts high level architecture.

Various overlay topologies can be built as below irrespective of physical topology beneath.

Advantages of SDWAN

There are many advantages of the SDWAN solution as below.

  • Designed to work with internet-centric and cloud-based Application and infrastructure
  • Meeting Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) for business-critical and real-time applications
  • Secured connectivity over any media
  • End to end segmentation and multi-tenant support - VRF but much more flexible
  • Reduced complexity and Zero Touch Provisioning saves time and money
  • Highly scalable supporting 10,000’s of locations.
  • Centralized and simplified management
  • Inbuilt lifecycle management
  • Cost-effective solution
  • Providing optimal user experience for SaaS and IaaS applications
  • Flexible deployment Options - on premise, hosted or managed service

What we do in SDWAN

Prabhsol provides the following service as part of the SDWAN infrastructure

  1. Assess existing Infrastructure, application requirement, and design SDWAN solution
  2. Implement SDWAN infrastructure and configure with business policy
  3. Monitor and Manage SDWAN infrastructure
  4. Migration of large WAN infrastructure to SDWAN Infrastructure
  5. Evaluate SDWAN vendors for specific business requirements
TOP