Tag Archives: wan optimization

08 Nov

SD-WAN is now SD-WAN TM

SD-WAN is evolving to SD-WAN TM

Many SD-WAN solutions promise adopters a software/hardware solution that will ultimately solve their traffic routing issues and improve network performance.   But research has shown that this is not the case.   Over 60% of SD-WAN installs are retooled or worse, uninstalled, simply because they just do not meet the needs of today’s modern wide area network.

Let’s be honest, SD-WAN has got a rap, not necessarily “bad” but perhaps has been touted, incorrectly, as a panacea to solve a multitude of issues faced by today’s WAN administrators.

So why the confusion and lack of understanding?   Perhaps it is marketing hype, where vendors in this market claim to have solutions that meet most customer’s needs, only to find far more is required than what is advertised.   Perhaps customers are too quick to jump on the bandwagon, with administrators installing “SD-WAN” simply to appease management that they now have the latest and greatest, or to try something and see if and how it works.

SD-WAN (Software-Defined WAN) is cool, and can be a very effective, cost saving solution for almost ANY WAN of any size or configuration.   After research with well over 100 SD-WAN users, both large and small, the clear differentiator in this discussion is undoubtedly, the “S”.  The Software.   It is well known that the hardware is no longer the focus for a successful, high speed WAN, it is how the software manages the traffic.    

It is all about network traffic management

Perhaps SD-WAN should be changed to SD-WAN-TM – WAN Traffic Management, because at the end of the day, it really is about traffic management, knowing what the traffic type is, where it originates, the destination and of course, how it gets there.

Modern WANs are becoming more and more complex, especially with the adoption of cloud and hybrid cloud services and solutions, better bandwidth offerings, faster cell networks (5G is blisteringly quick) and of course, the need to access information and data from anywhere at any time, using a multitude of devices.

Users are driving the change.   Instant access is imperative, demanded, and critical to the success of today’s fast paced on line business to consumer economy.     Businesses are adapting to this change requiring more connectivity to aligned organizations, such as healthcare institutions connecting to insurance companies, financial institutions connecting to regulatory bodies, mortgage and insurance companies, and large on line retailers managing inventory, deliveries, and billing.   We are becoming more and more connected, and with that brings the number 1 fear for any network administrator, the security of their data.

Security is undoubtedly the one issue keeping the WAN administrator awake at night.   With the massive increase in network traffic on multiple and different link types, especially broadband, from multiple devices, the question must now be, how do you manage this traffic effectively, efficiently and most importantly, easily?

In order to have a reliable, secure and effective WAN, it is imperative that administrators take control of traffic across the network.    Knowing how traffic is being routed and most importantly, being able to control it, is without question the most important factor affecting the modern WAN.  Managing this traffic across multiple links using multiple formats is key.   This is the promise of SD-WAN.

5 Necessities for a cost effective SD-WAN solution

To get the best “S” for your SD-WAN needs, there are a few easy steps any business should take.   Here are 5 key questions you MUST ask your SD-WAN vendor:

  1. Will your SD-WAN solution work with existing routers and network protocols?
  2. Will your SD-WAN solution work with multiple links in one device, even if those links are different types and speeds, including copper, fiber, 3G,4G,5G LTE, broadband and satellite?
  3. Will your Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solution securely load balance and failover BOTH inbound and outbound traffic, even if this is VoIP or Video resulting in zero dropped calls?
  4. Does your SD-WAN solution allow setting of thresholds for any traffic type, including application specific, protocol specific, line specific, or interface specific?
  5. Will your SD-WAN solution be capable of managing traffic securely to and from any cloud or hybrid cloud application or service and can you do this all from a single screen view of the entire network?

If you answered yes to ALL of these questions, you have a very good SD-WAN solution, or even better, best of breed WAN traffic management.

Traffic management is already the most important factor affecting networks today.  It will become even more important and critical as more and more devices connect.    Multiple research predicts up to 50 Billion devices connected to the Internet by 2025.

To be sure you have the right “S” to manage your traffic, check to see how your network is designed, the links you have in place, the firewalls, routers, the current traffic management system, and ask yourself what is possible and what will be required to ensure reliability, security, redundancy, efficiency and, perhaps often overlooked, how simple will it be to configure and manage?

FatPipe Networks have been designing and developing best of breed SD-WAN solutions for over 17 years, are the holder of 12 seminal patents and are FIPS 140-2 certified.   With the capability of managing up to 16 different links, with multiple speeds, sub second failover, stateful firewall, inbound redundancy and security, best WAN Optimization options, and scalable up to 40Gb, FatPipe can meet all of the customer SD-WAN requirements.   FatPipe’s traffic management is second to none.   Offering both capex and managed service solutions, FatPipe is unique in the market.   Can you afford not to check out FatPipe’s WAN traffic management capabilities?

Call FatPipe today at 801-683-5656 x 1224.   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

24 Sep

What’s in an SD-WAN?

What’s in an SD-WAN?

By R. Scott Raynovich, Principal Analyst Futuriom

Software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) technology combines many desired enterprise networking features – including security, bandwidth optimization, and application acceleration – and delivers them with a cloud-managed networking architecture.

One of the primary benefits of SD-WAN technology is that it implements new network services and features in software, without requiring hardware upgrades. Enterprise and service-provider buyers are interested in the multiple benefits of SD-WAN, including improving and managing broadband Internet, reducing network costs for both connectivity and operating expense (opex), and improved management and automation. Service providers are aware of this trend and are scrambling to put together managed services offerings, as their MPLS offerings will clearly be replaced by SD-WAN services in the long term.

The Network’s Cloud Evolution

One of the big trends with information technology is the move to the cloud. Enterprises now expect to buy IT services, on-demand, from the cloud. The network is moving to the cloud as well. Enterprise network managers seek the agility and flexibility of managing their network from the cloud, while at the same time getting locked into proprietary equipment on expensive private lines. Gains in Internet availability and bandwidth optimization technology, such as WAN optimization, de-duplication, load-balancing, and link balancing, have become more sophisticated, enabling enterprises to leverage Internet broadband for business applications. This is driving the rapid expansion of the SD-WAN market, which provides all of this functionality in a cloud-delivered model

The Network’s Cloud Evolution

Futuriom’s ongoing interviews with enterprise end users as well as service providers delivering SD-WAN reveals the following goals in connecting the WAN in these new cloud environments:

  • Optimize and accelerate WAN traffic to the cloud
  • Improve overall network security
  • Reduce costs related to WAN bandwidth
  • Leverage multiple access technologies such as fiber, DSL, and wireless
  • Increased flexibility in CPE so that management can be outsourced or updated with software-only upgrades
  • Improve capability to purchase, provision, and manage network services via the cloud, using software

Customers can solve all of these problems with a single SD-WAN offering that addresses these challenges with specific features. Take a look at the features that can now be typically included in an SD-WAN package:

Let’s highlight why all of these SD-WAN features are important.

Router replacement and Open CPE: Managing proprietary hardware and customer premises equipment (CPE), including branch-office routers, can be expensive and time consuming. SD-WAN can be used to simplify the deployment and management of CPE – especially if you are a retail company that has to manage hundreds or thousands of branches. SD-WAN functionality can be delivered on open, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and managed from the cloud, helping to streamline and automate management.

Enhanced Security and Cloud VPN: One of the allures of SD-WAN technology is that it can be used to deploy a virtual private network (VPN) as a software overlay using end-to-end encryption. This helps meet security requirements for businesses that may want to connect branch offices or retail outlets but also have high security requirements. But SD-WAN platforms can also be used to deliver value-added security services such as stronger encryption, malware detection, and intrusion detection services (IDS). Security is becoming an important checklist item for SD-WAN.

WAN Optimization: SD-WAN can be used to improve the performance of applications on the network. WAN optimization, once a discrete function delivered with a hardware or software appliances, is being integrated into SD-WAN functionality. Many SD-WAN technologies include WAN optimization functionality and we expect this to be a checklist item in SD-WAN deployments.

Application Performance Enhancement: Cloud WAN solutions can be built that optimize access to cloud applications by monitoring traffic and routing higher-priority business applications ahead of leisure services such as Netflix and YouTube. Additionally, many WAN services can peer directly with cloud services to offer a “fast lane” to the business applications. These techniques can be used to “offload” enterprise WAN backhaul, routing cloud traffic directly to the source using a combination of broadband technologies. This will also have the effect of challenging the traditional ADC model of providing these services as part of a discrete hardware device. In addition, some SD-WAN vendors are working with cloud vendors to set up specialized cloud gateways and POPs in cloud datacenters to provide more direct access to cloud applications.

Cloud Management: As we have outlined, SD-WAN functionality can be deployed using COTS hardware and then managed from the cloud. This means that new network features, functionality, and updates can be managed with software over the network, rather than forklift upgrades, yielding a network-as-a-service model.

The SD-WAN market is now rapidly moving to customer deployments and accelerating because it delivers a more flexible, agile, and feature-rich platform to manage the enterprise WAN. Futuriom believes that in 2019 the market will continue to accelerate and drive into the billions of dollars, as it replaces some legacy technologies for VPN, ADC, edge routers, and firewalls. The market is consolidating around software-delivered and adaptive WAN services that can connect either through thin customer clients or industry-standard CPE.

FatPipe Networks have been selling software defined networking solutions for over 20 years and have specialized in providing customers with best of breed security, (one of the only SD-WAN providers with FIPS 140-2 government certification) reliability, flexibility (can support up to 15 interfaces in one device) and is easy to manage, providing a single pane interface view of the entire network.

FatPipe Networks www.fatpipeinc.com

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. 

01 Dec

Proven SD-WAN for Hybrid Networks is Here Today

The promise of software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) has been touted for several years, but most organizations have yet to adopt the technology: fewer than 1% of enterprises have deployed SD-WANs as of the end of 2015 (Market Guide for Software-Defined WAN, Gartner, Dec 1, 2015). A recent survey of IT professionals by consulting group Ashton, Metzler & Associates (When will SD-WANs ‘cross the chasm’?, Jim Metzler, PhD, TechTarget, 2016) reveals some of the obstacles that prevent greater adoption of SD-WAN in organizations:

  • 25% of respondents are concerned about how to integrate software-defined networks into their current infrastructure
  • 25% of respondents feel there isn’t a strong business case for implementing SD-WAN
  • 25% of respondents believe enabling technologies for SD-WAN are immature

With the introduction of the industry-first Avaya SDN Fx™ + FatPipe® SD-WAN integrated solution, Avaya customers can now expect the simplicity, security and scalability of SDN Fabric Connect in their LANs extended via FatPipe across the entire Unified Communications network or hybrid WAN. This converged solution from two technology innovators addresses the main concerns about implementing a software-defined network:

  • Support for a multitude of connection types and legacy systems – MPLS, broadband, wireless, satellite, T1/E1 and more—allows for cost-effective, in-place implementation that easily integrates with an organization’s network investments
  • Multi-line compression and WAN optimization increase bandwidth availability of existing lines by up to 70%, yielding large cost savings on expensive MPLS lines; and aggregation of a variety of paths presents options for additional cost savings and extra capacity for future growth, thereby strengthening the business case for an SD-WAN deployment
  • With 11 patents and 180 technology claims, FatPipe has been in the SD-WAN business for more than 15 years and has successfully deployed 10,000+ devices world-wide, thereby assuring enterprises that the SD-WAN technology is mature and ready to implement

As connected devices proliferate, data flows continue to expand and security concerns rise. Software-defined networks solve many of the problems that come with the increasing complexity of today’s networks. Legitimate concerns about SD-WAN have hindered wide-spread adoption to date, but the Avaya SDN Fx + FatPipe SD-WAN solution alleviates issues and presents enterprises with options for a next-generation hybrid wide area network. From Datacenter-to-Desktop™, Avaya SDN Fx + FatPipe SD-WAN delivers the benefits of software-defined networking today.