What is SD WAN and Why Do You Need It

Categories: Education

Corporate networks have long used Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) as a standard practice to connect their office locations. But with the arrival of social networks for businesses,  Web 3.0 and remote working, most corporations are looking for sustainable network solutions with in-built security elements. Many network providers have innovated solutions to meet these new challenges and plug the network gap, one of which is Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN). This pay-as-you-go solution offers network elasticity, built-in protection, and cloud-first services for businesses looking for tomorrow’s network solutions. 

Let us now explore SD-WAN for business and how it optimizes the network.

Secured SD-WAN for Optimized Network

So what is secured SD-WAN? Secured SD-WAN is an essential network capability for a business that wants optimized performance at a competitive price. Software-Defined Wide Area Networks give businesses enterprise-level network capabilities via a software layer running over the network infrastructure. SD-WAN also offers businesses the following key benefits:

1. Enhanced Security: Using a secured SD-WAN ensures that the corporate network is well-protected from cyberthreats. It focuses on ensuring connectivity across business-subscriber's multiple locations and endpoints and encrypts the traffic to protect it from unauthorized access or interception. Further layers of security are created by using firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and secure tunnels. 

2. Dynamic Path Selection:Secured SD-WAN plays a critical role in the intelligent selection of paths for easy network traffic flow. Network congestion, latency, and link availability are all evaluated and anticipated to route the traffic flow. Therefore, optimal performance and reliability are automatically derived because of SD-WAN’s advanced capabilities in routing traffic. 

3. Quality of Service Optimization: SD-WAN evaluates and adjusts network traffic based on application requirements. Bandwidths are assigned and prioritized for critical applications like voice and video, leading to a great balance of bandwidth load and ensuring consistent and high-quality performance. This unique QoS optimization has made SD-WAN very popular among businesses since there is an indirect impact on productivity and efficiency due to consistent network availability. 

4. Easy to Configure Network: How does secured SD-WAN ease configuring and provisioning a network? It quickens these processes with a centralized management platform, allowing businesses to create native network policies, establish routing rules, and monitor and control security settings for all locations of a business. The unified single-level network administration makes provisioning and configuring a network easy, lowering the threshold for human error in manual configuration.

5. Agile Networks: Secured SD-WAN brings great agility to the network. The demands of changing business conditions may require additional network sources, their reallocation, and changes in some of the local settings. The advantage of managing the network using software-defined settings is that resources can be extensively reconfigured. 

6. Works with Existing Infrastructure: One of the major advantages of a secured SD-WAN solution is its easy integration with the current network processes of the business. Hence, there is no time loss from additional investment in enabling the business to access the NaaS network.

These are the major roles of secured SD-WAN bringing businesses enhanced security, optimized network performance, and simplified administration.  

Secured SD-WAN for Businesses in Web 3.0 Scenario

As businesses transform digitally, they access new tools and platforms to market, communicate, and reach their target audience. Gone are the days of print advertisements and flyers, as social networks and Web 3.0 are already dominating business operations. This has changed many of the network requirements for businesses. For example, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality apps on Web 3.0 need ultra-low latency to function at full potential. 

Secured SD-WAN addresses this gap with relevant technology updates and changes. Here is how SD-WAN aligns with the trends of social networks and Web 3.0:

1. Increased Network Traffic and Complexity: Web 3.0 uses a higher volume of rich-media content, instant interactions, and data-intensive activities. Secured SD-WAN intelligently routes this traffic based on application priorities.  

2. Quality of Experience (QoE): SD-WAN for businessesunderstands that user experience enhances engagement. It also enhances QoE through traffic shaping, bandwidth allocation, and latency reduction for live streaming and virtual reality experiences.

3. Dynamic Traffic Management: SD-WAN can adapt to changes in use patterns and prioritize traffic for peak times by allocating more bandwidth to social media apps to prevent slowdowns. 

4. Security and Privacy: Secured SD-WAN extends key features like encryption, intrusion detection, and threat mitigation to safeguard sensitive data and protect against cyber threats.

5. Cloud Integration: Social network and Web 3.0 applications are increasingly used by businesses due to their easy availability via the cloud. SD-WAN for businesses addresses this aspect by seamlessly integrating with cloud services and efficiently connecting to cloud resources. It controls data backhaul and optimizes access to cloud-based applications.

Conclusion

Businesses need a highly intuitive, integrated network solution for smooth operations and communications. An agile network that is quick to install, run, and maintain but remains a low-cost, easily scalable solution can be an effective solution. In addition, the capabilities of the NaaS model can help businesses build a cloud-edge network for their businesses, while SD-WAN solves the current network challenges. 

Summary