Tag Archives: Networking

01 Feb

WAN Edge and SD-WAN, what you need to know

There are plenty of articles and information on the WAN Edge.    Perhaps the question to ask is, so what? How does this affect today’s multi-line hybrid WAN?  With research suggesting there will be 50 billion devices attached to the Internet in the next 3 to 5 years, how does the corporate network manage access to their applications and information stored, both on premise, in the cloud and from WAN edge devices?

Today’s corporate WAN’s are complex, and the top issues faced by IT management are still the security of data flowing across the network, managing access, the co-mingling of on premise and cloud-based applications, and reliable, high speed connectivity.   Adding new WAN EDGE devices is simply adding new access and data flow challenges that require careful management.   But who has extra IT staff for this?   They key to success rests with the management of this data traffic.

WAN of Things

The WAN ‘edge’ is evolving into the new WAN of things.  Remember IoT?   WANoT could be how data is to be served to users, no matter where they are, and no matter what device they use.   The question then changes to how to ensure secure, reliable access to applications and information no matter what the access route.

Data can be anywhere these days, applications too.   It is the secure, reliable access to this data, the applications and information needed to be successful in today’s digital society.

WAN Edge devices have computational power

WAN Edge devices have evolved to where they now have computing power, meaning a major portion of data analysis and computational functions are being handled “at the edge”. For example, routers are WAN edge devices, as are switches, but so are weather sensors and satellite tracking devices in shipping.  The proliferation of these “smart” devices with computational power can transform the business WAN, especially if the data from these devices becomes mission critical. Instead of a device sending data only, it is now able to compute and send results of that computational analysis back to the WAN.  This data is then sent to a web property or reporting tool. The downside of all of this computational activity that it adds more traffic to the network.

Control and management of data flow is not new, but is certainly becoming more critical, especially with more and more devices attaching to networks.   WAN traffic management is the key and IT administrators are seeking solutions that automate the management of this traffic.

So, what about “SD-WAN”?   Surely this was the answer to the IT administrators desire for WAN traffic control and management?   Well, it seems that since the advent of SD-WAN, many businesses have been trying to implement a solution that supposedly promises nirvana.   But this has had mixed results at best. The problem is that SD-WAN means different things to different people. Some SD-WAN solutions are complex, some are off premise or cloud based, and some cannot deliver on the promise of true WAN traffic management.

What is True WAN Traffic Management?

Recent research with customers across the globe suggests that “true” WAN traffic management requires sophisticated software that can automatically manage any traffic type, on any type of link.   Today , businesses want to customize their data traffic that results in secure, highly reliable data flow across the WAN, with limited, if any, administration oversight. This software must have the ability to customize HOW to direct this WAN traffic, especially if it has come from a WAN Edge device, using tools that can prioritize link usage with options to customize the flow.    Requested options are, interface type, application signature, protocol, IP address or destination, port source or destination or a combination thereof. True traffic management must also have the ability to set thresholds, based on almost any criteria, allowing for complete customization of how this traffic is directed across the circuits.

Identification of WAN Edge devices then becomes much easier, and the traffic flowing to and from them, customized and optimized. Using this true traffic management,  it does not matter what type of device it is, where it is located, or how it is connecting to the network.   Providing seamless, secure, and reliable access is paramount as is ease of installation and management.

FatPipe Networks has been developing and providing WAN traffic solutions for over 20 years.  With 13 seminal patents, over 182 technical claims, FatPipe is a leader in the industry for SD-WAN, WAN Edge solutions and true WAN traffic management.

FatPipe is continuously innovating and developing to meet customer demand.  FatPipe’s Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) and SDN traffic management solutions lead the industry with a security module that is FIPS 140-2 certified.   With a rich, complete suite of software to customize application traffic on premise or in the cloud, as well as for remote users and offices, FatPipe offers true WAN traffic management.  Cloud approved, FatPipe also supports any link type including Fiber, Copper, Wireless (3G:4G:5G LTE), and satellite.

Recently, FatPipe received a rating of 4.9 out of 5 by Gartner, and 100% of customers reviewed stated they would recommend FatPipe. The nearest competitor had 4.8 and 86% respectively.

If you are adding WAN edge devices, or are wanting to manage WAN traffic securely and cost effectively, you have to consider FatPipe Networks solutions.

Contact FatPipe today – 801-683-5656 or visit www.fatpipeinc.com

17 Jan

Avaya and FatPipe Partner to improve customer mobile experience

Toll Free is still popular, but using a mobile provides new challenges

Toll-free numbers aren’t going away any time soon. Companies still use them to connect customers to their contact centers. What’s different from a few years ago is that most contact center calls now come from mobile devices. And while companies are confident that they’re providing a good mobile experience, their customers don’t often feel the same.

One problem contact centers face is having to pay for each call going through a toll-free line, whether it originates from a smartphone or a landline. This significantly adds to a company’s operating expenses. The Avaya Mobile Experience (AME), launched in 2018, addresses this problem by lowering toll-free and agent costs. The cloud-based service can send incoming calls directly to a contact center without passing it to a fixed network.

AME identifies when a call is coming from a mobile phone, transfers contextual information on the caller to a contact center, and deflects calls to the mobile web for a richer customer service experience. If a caller chooses that option, the toll-free call ends and they receive a link for personalized access to a website. Customers can then use self-service tools like chatbots or a combination of voice, video, and co-browsing.

SD-WAN provides better visibility

With the proliferation of smartphones, consumers have come to expect a seamless digital experience. When dialing a toll-free number, they want agents to know who they are and have additional context that could speed up the call. AME was designed with those needs in mind. It collects customer information to assist contact center agents, so they can handle a call more efficiently if a customer prefers to interact via voice.

Greater multichannel engagement equips companies with valuable insight about customer behavior. But to pull it off, companies need a reliable network that prioritizes voice over IP (VoIP), video, and other real-time traffic without dropping sessions. By deploying a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), companies can have better visibility into their network. An SD-WAN performs over any type of transport—including MPLS, broadband, cellular, and satellite—and selects an optimal path for each data packet.

A SD-WAN infrastructure needs reliable internet connectivity with sufficient bandwidth. SD-WANs provide operational flexibility, but also create complexities that stem from implementing WAN load balancing for internal, internet-facing, and mobile workloads. Thus, they require monitoring and tuning internet throughput for performance. A SD-WAN infrastructure must also include secure access to mobile devices as traffic is transported outside the firewall.

FatPipe and Avaya Mobile Experience (AME) helps improve overall customer experience

FatPipe, a provider of intra-corporate WAN solutions, has developed a secure multi-path VPN (MPVPN) to be implemented for hybrid WAN. It supports bidirectional quality of service (QoS), which monitors the sending and receiving of calls/sessions. An advanced routing architecture that utilizes MPVPN can correct up to 15 percent packet loss on diverse circuits simultaneously, while maintaining toll-quality calls and seamless failover.

Contact centers with mobile customers looking to migrate away from high cost MPLS circuits, now have the option of deploying FatPipe’s dual-path SD-WAN for AME. FatPipe and Avaya came up with a combined solution that equips contact centers with a hybrid WAN mobile infrastructure, which can reduce toll call expenses by up 40 percent annually, per FatPipe.

Call center response is vastly improved

The vendors formed a global alliance to help contact centers achieve those cost savings through joint product verification, pre-integration, and certified solutions. Beyond cost savings, the vendors see companies bridging an existing technology gap.

Companies that implement FatPipe’s SD-WAN with AME can control, monitor, and maintain multiple WAN connections, eliminating the need for Internet Service Provider (ISP) management. As a result, smartphone users get more self-service options on a hybrid network that’s flexible and can accommodate new cloud-based applications.

Contact FatPipe Networks at 801-683-5656 x 1224 for more information.  www.fatpipeinc.com.

29 Oct

SD-WAN Growing Use Cases for the Cloud

SD-WAN: Growing Use Cases for the Cloud

It’s remarkable how fast software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) has gained momentum. Many people ask why. The answer is: SD-WAN is expanding the functionality of automating and management access to cloud applications.

The primary trigger for the growth and interest in SD-WAN is the shift, over the past decade, of a massive amount of applications to the cloud (both private and public). Networks in the client-server era were built to access applications that were housed either at an enterprise site or, more rarely, in a private data center. But the cloud shifted the game — creating the need for fast access to applications wherever they reside, including the cloud when accessed across the Internet.

Cloud Connection Challenges

From the CIO or CTO’s perspective, cloud has many benefits but also presents many challenges from the network and security point of view. Cloud applications can speed the velocity and agility of IT, enabling your workforce to connect and build on new applications on demand.

But the challenge is that you need to build a new infrastructure to support these cloud applications. There are several challenges to connecting your workforce to this new world of agile cloud applications. Here are a few:

Application Performance: Cloud means there are many routes for workers to connect – and generally they do so using the network, not always under control of the corporate network. They could be using Internet broadband to connect to a cloud application or they might be on a corporate WAN. SD-WAN technology can add network intelligence to the corporate WAN to recognize which applications are being accessed and connect them in the most efficient, cost effective way. It can provide Internet breakout to make sure that general Internet traffic is not routed through expensive private data-center connections (such as MPLS). And furthermore, SD-WAN technology can be used to connect directly to recognize the most common cloud applications (Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce), and connect to application-specific gateways that speed up applications access.

Security: With the increased use of the Internet and cloud technologies, it’s harder for IT staff to assure security when employees are using the network to connect to the cloud. SD-WAN can enable additional network visibility and security functions that assure that cloud applications are being accessed in a secure way. More importantly, by enabling network branches and endpoints with SD-WAN, IT staff can gain more insight into how the networks are being used and implement security policies.

Agility and Automation: In the hardware-based WAN world, networks were connected with complicated hardware configurations and leased lines, making changes to the network topology and architecture difficult. In order to connect to the cloud, a more responsive network is needed to gain control and visibility over cloud connections. With SD-WAN, networks can be more quickly orchestrated and changed using software, increasing the speed with which IT and networking staff can respond to changing business demand. In addition, SD-WAN deployments can often be set up using software-based automation tools such as templates.

End-User Attraction: Making Life Easier

What’s most powerful about SD-WAN is that it has the potential to solve several of these challenges at once, by providing an integrated, software-driven platform for automating network policy and applications.

Cloud applications mean that traffic flows within the network have drastically changed and become inefficient. The technology to handle these new traffic flows is embedded in many SD-WAN platforms.

SD-WAN emerged with a few use cases anchored to the need for fast cloud access, but those use cases are now expanding, according to Futuriom research.  That is because the WAN is a key enabler — and also possibly stumbling block — for cloud applications.

So how exactly does SD-WAN do that? The MEF, a global industry alliance comprised of more than 150 networking technology and service-provider organizations, is working to reduce the confusion surrounding SD-WAN technologies and solutions. As part of their work the MEF has identified the following as being fundamental capabilities of SD-WAN managed services:

  • Secure, IP-based virtual overlay network
  • Transport-independence of underlay network
  • Service assurance of each SD-WAN tunnel
  • Application-driven packet forwarding
  • High availability through multiple WAN links
  • Policy-based packet forwarding
  • Service automation via centralized management, control and orchestration
  • The MEF also identified some value-added services that are beyond the fundamental SD-WAN service offering. This includes WAN optimization and advanced security services.

These expanding capabilities of SD-WAN show why it’s growing so fast – it’s become the Swiss army knife of WAN automation and management. This is why IT and network managers have taken a liking to the approach is that streamlines the management of many of challenges posed to given users a better experience in connecting to the cloud.

FatPipe Networks has been developing and delivering traffic management solutions for over 17 years and was “SD-WAN before SD-WAN was cool”- Gartner.   With 12 seminal patents and a comprehensive suite that addresses any SD-WAN need, FatPipe Networks is a must for any WAN administrator considering or updating their WAN traffic management needs

26 Jul

12 Attributes of a Best of Breed SD-WAN

12 Attributes of a Best of Breed SD-WAN Solution & Why You Need One for Secure Traffic Management

SD-WAN is really about traffic management.   Sure, zero touch deployment is not necessarily a traffic management solution, but the reason software is driving WAN deployments and configurations is simply that it is capable of managing your data links and traffic across these links.

Network Security

Extensive research has established that security is the number one issue faced by WAN administrators.  Hosting your data in the cloud, hybrid cloud or on premise has created the need for highly secure traffic management between users and your data.   There are a lot of SD-WAN solutions out there that claim to have the capabilities to manage this traffic securely, but not all SD-WAN is the same.

If you think security, firewalls are part of the conversation.   Firewalls are designed to detect and prevent intrusion, but are not WAN traffic management devices.   Traditional Routers are designed to route traffic over multiple links, but have been complicated to install and definitely complicated to manage.

SD-WAN has certainly disrupted the traditional networking industry and today, software managing your data traffic is becoming much more commonplace.   For SD-WAN to be successful in today’s complicated networks, it must be simple to install and, above all, simple to use and administrate.   It must be able to run on popular hypervisors, be compatible with cloud infrastructures and understand multiple link types, including legacy systems, such as BGP networks, as well as the less expensive and ubiquitous broadband networks.

So how does the WAN administrator find the best SD-WAN solution when there is so much choice and marketing hype?   Understanding the features and functions of pure SD-WAN is important, especially when it comes to security of your data.

Best of breed SD-WAN solutions will come with the following features:

  1. Easy to install
  2. Support ALL link types (existing legacy systems (BGP) as well as Internet, satellite, 3G,4G,5G, LTE, cable)
  3. Support multiple links in one device (up to 12 interfaces is not uncommon)
  4. Support bandwidth ranges from 10Mb up to 40 Gig.
  5. Provide secure management of BOTH inbound and outbound traffic.
  6. Allow customization and assignment of application traffic on certain links with instant failover
  7. Ability to determine healthy links instantly, which allows for instant failover, of BOTH inbound and outbound traffic. This usually means the methodology used to test the links is very important.  Ask what algorithms the software uses to test the links.
  8. Cloud support with emphasis on secure traffic transmission and instant failover capabilities to multiple link types.
  9. Zero touch branch deployment
  10. Options to host or outsource to MSP
  11. Opex or Capex offerings
  12. Most important! Easy to use management tool!   It must provide a simple to use traffic management tool that allows for quick, easy and intuitive changes to any link or application traffic not matter where that application or link is located on the WAN.   You should NOT have to retrain your IT staff or pay for certified staff to manage your SD-WAN implementation.

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list, but if you are looking for an SD-WAN solution to sustain your systems for some time to come, you need to consider each of the features above and map them to your long-term plan.  Remember, security is the number one issue, so do not look at any SD-WAN solution that cannot provide selective encrypted data flow across the network, and preferably choose solutions that incorporate stateful firewall IDS/IPS features.    SD-WAN will definitely benefit the efficiency of your network, but do not settle for limited capabilities, knowing that your user count will increase and your network will expand.

FatPipe Networks has been developing and selling SD-WAN solutions for over 17 years, and are widely known as the “inventors” of SD-WAN.   The software suite is extremely comprehensive, but what is most talked about is the easy to use interface, EnterpriseView™ – which is a single pane view of the network allowing administrators easy access and with simple to understand menus, administrators can make changes to traffic management, no matter the destination, starting point or route taken.

FatPipe Networks encryption is FIPS 140-2 certified, making it the only SD-WAN vendor with an encryption module approved by government agencies.  To add to the security capabilities, FatPipe recently announced firewall support next generation firewall IPS/IDS features allowing users the luxury of having a highly secure traffic management solution with integrated firewalling.

FatPipe’s comprehensive SD-WAN suite is unique in the industry especially its patented SmartDNS™ which provides customers with INBOUND fail-over capabilities, not seen in other SD-WAN offerings.   FatPipe also provides industry leading policy-based routing, giving administrators the ability to set thresholds based on common network issues, such as latency, jitter, and packet loss that will trigger if certain user defined conditions are met, ensuring data is not lost or compromised due to congestion or other link issues.

FatPipe is certainly a top contender if you are seriously considering SD-WAN or are upgrading your current network solution.  Call FatPipe today at 1-801-683-5656 x 1224.

www.fatpipeinc.com

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29 May

LTE Intelligent Edge device from FatPipe now available

FatPipe Announces General Availability of Integrated LTE to its Intelligent Edge SD-WAN Devices

FatPipe technology allows for seamless failover of sessions including VoIP to LTE without dropping sessions.

MAY 22, 2019 (Salt Lake City) FatPipe Networks, the inventors and multiple patents holder of key SD-WAN technologies, announced the availability of integrated LTE as a WAN option in its intelligent edge SD-WANs.  This innovation is designed to assist small branches in having a back up to their fixed line solutions. In addition, customers can also use multiple 4G/LTE connections in locations where they do not have fixed line options.

FatPipe’s SD-WAN provides automatic failover and intelligent load balancing from one line to another without dropping a session or VPN connection. This ensures that a session or a VoIP call is not dropped when a line fails and the session is carried over to another line.

“This is of great value to retail and financial institutions as they do not have to re-start a session or double charge a customer by mistake,” said Dr. Ragula Bhaskar, CEO of FatPipe, “FatPipe’s LTE option has been available to early adoption customers for a year and now we are formally announcing the general availability. FatPipe is also 5G ready.”

FatPipe’s Integration of LTE into its Intelligent Edge SD-WAN leverages three of FatPipe’s previous innovations:

  1. FatPipe’s superior patented SD-WAN technology enables data to be placed on a single line and failed over seamlessly to a second line without dropping the session or packets vs other SD-WAN technologies that either drop the sessions and have to be re-started or have to duplicate the packets on two lines, which places undue burden on bandwidth by double bandwidth needs. Such duplication technology is especially detrimental to LTE and 4G transmissions.
  2. FatPipe’s patented Dynamic IP addressing scheme technology, which can use dynamic (not fixed)  IP addresses of LTE and aggregate the line with a fixed IP. This reduces monthly costs, especially for LTE cards. 
  3. FatPipe WAN Optimization reduces the amount of data transmitted by 40% to 90%,  further reducing LTE costs.

FatPipe’s SD-WAN solutions simplify multi-vendor interoperability and include key features that transcend WAN failures to maintain business continuity, including zero-touch branch deployment, hybrid WAN connectivity, tuned application performance, easy integration, granular network visibility, multi-path security, secure full mesh VPN connectivity and flexible centralized policy deployments.

“FatPipe’s intelligent edge with 4G directly addresses market demand in our customer base,” said Dante Passalacqua, “FatPipe’s unparalleled SD-WAN with an integrated modem further simplifies the ease of deployment and creates a cost-effective solution for our customers, especially in retail. We are pleased that FatPipe is very responsive to market needs; FatPipe makes it easy for us to offer our customers the best in class solutions.”

About FatPipe Networks

FatPipe Networks invented the concept of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and hybrid WANs that eliminate the need for hardware and software, or cooperation from ISPs and allows companies and service providers to control multi-link network traffic. FatPipe currently has 11 U.S. patents and more than 180 technology claims related to multipath, software-defined networking and selective encryption of broadband networks. FatPipe technology provides the world’s best intra-corporate wide area network solutions that transcend Internet and other network failures to maintain business continuity and high transmission security. FatPipe, with several thousand customers, has offices in the United States and around the world, and more than 700 resellers worldwide including almost all national resellers in the US. For more information, visit www.fatpipe.com.