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SD-WAN vs Traditional WAN Architecture and Comparison


Today I am going to start the basics of the most common term now a days you heard from various vendors in the Network Virtualization platform. Now a days it has been observed that over the past some years there have been significant advancements and improvements in increasing the level of agility and flexibility in the data center through software defined networking (SDN). 

Enterprises are putting a lot of money on the SDN solution in the datacenter but still there is a lot of work to do in the WAN side of the network. One part of IT that has yet to evolve and lacks flexibility is the enterprise wide-area network (WAN).


Enhancements in the WAN must be at the top of every IT and Enterprise network priority list because organizations can only be as agile only when there is some agility in the part of WAN. If businesses are going to ever reach the level of agility required to compete in today's digital world, now is the time for the WAN to evolve into a Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN).

Fig 1.1- SD-WAN solution 

SD-WAN is the solution and can be deployed with MPLS. SD-WAN architecture has changed this equation with a variety of technologies that offer business-class traffic service independent of the underlying transport. You may be understand the underlying networks or called as IP network.

If you talk about the SD-WAN cloud based solution, Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN additionally optimizes the delivery of traffic directly and efficiently to other cloud-based destinations by building software-defined encrypted tunnels when and where needed, dynamically steering traffic, and leveraging cloud-based CPE and gateways. This traffic may never hit a data center or an aggregation site on your traditional MPLS VPN.

Fig 1.2- SDWAN Deployment consideration


We have different vendors who provide the SD-WAN solution in the market and one of the major vendor is Viptela, VeloCloud, Cloud Genix, Pertino, Silver-Peak and Glue Networks which provides you the Hybrid WAN solution. Viptela is now the part of Cisco Systems, so Cisco have two different SD-WAN solution, while VMware NSX is also a SD-WAN solution in the market who is competing with the other major vendors.

Advantages of SD-WAN:
  • Higher performance, Lower Cost and greater reliability than that of the traditional WAN Solution
  • With the use of SD-WAN you have compatibility with existing connectivity technology (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, LTE, MPLS, etc.)
  • It will replace expensive private WAN technology with single-source security
  • You have the leverage of centralized traffic control that you can adjust to your needs
  • Wit the SD-WAN solution you can automated device management and access to cloud-based applications 


Below is the table shows the difference between the SD-WAN solution and the traditional WAN solution. Click on the image to see clearly

Fig 1.3- Comparison- Traditional WAN vs SD-WAN