twenty years ago, I used to are a network engineer for a fast-growing company that had multiple data centers and several remote offices, and I recall all the work necessary to onboard a remote site simply. Basically, it took months of planning and execution including ordering circuits, getting connectivity and expending hours up, and sometimes full days, deploying complex configurations to secure the connectivity by establishing encrypted tunnels and steering the proper traffic across them. Obviously, all of this ongoing work was manual. At that time I was very pleased with the actual fact tht I could do such complex configurations that required so many lines of CLI but that has been just how things were done.

Through the decade that followed, we saw a slew of WAN and encryption technologies become open to help with the demand and scale for secure network traffic. MPLS, alongside frame Relay, became popular and IPsec-related encryption technologies became typical extremely. All this was based on the truth that most traffic was destined to 1 clear location which is the data center that each company had to create to store all its jewels including applications, databases and critical data. The info center served because the gateway to the web also.

From the security perspective, the model was had and simple clear boundaries. All infrastructure within the enterprise was trusted and everything outside like the DMZ and internet was called untrusted, so firewalls along with other proper security devices were deployed at these boundaries mainly at the info center to be able to protect the organization.

The decade that followed brought some disrupting trends. We moved from desktops to laptops and cellular devices became typical then. We became more influenced by voice and video services which meant regular infrastructure updates were frequently had a need to cope with increasing demands for bandwidth.

As WAN services became more critical, businesses had to purchase expensive redundant links which the secondary link was sitting idle designed as a backup link in case there is a primary link failure. Although there have been some challenges, this model exercised well for quite a while pretty.

The rise of Cloud Computing

Although Cloud Computing ‘s been around because the early 2000s, rapid adoption didn’t materialize until recently because of multiple factors including general insufficient security and trust concerns. During the last 5 years, however, a fresh trend picked up and several organizations began to see advantages to cloud computing that allowed for cost saving and much more flexibility. For example, small businesses is now able to have their servers operate on a cloud Company (CSP) famous brands AWS or Azure instead of having to spend a great deal of Capex money to create a data center. Basically, mindsets are changing even yet in conservative sectors such as for example Financials as per the next quote from the banking customer.

“ In 2020, we left our data centers behind and moved to the general public cloud to generate exceptional banking experiences for the customers. The agility, scalability and elasticity of the cloud are helping us build the lender into the future”

Furthermore, Software as something (SaaS) is another style that is also changing just how we consume applications. More information on critical applications offering Office 365, Salesforce, WebEx, Box and so many more are increasingly being served from the cloud now.

While moving to the cloud trend has been accelerating during the last 5 years the COVID pandemic has sure made this trend accelerate exponentially sufficient reason for it the necessity for a fresh architecture that’s better suitable for address these new diverse challenges.

The necessity for SDWAN

As organizations adopt SaaS and IaaS increasingly, the old style of networking won’t work for the primary reason that services are no more surviving in one place but are actually distributed over the internet on multiple clouds. Basically, we are able to no longer depend on the data center because the gateway to the web because going that route no more gives us the perfect path and therefore introduces more latency culminating in sub-optimal user application experience. Also More traffic at the info center requires expensive links in addition to network and security equipment that may support the throughput.

In addition, the client consumption model for connectivity is changing and instead of spending big money on expensive MPLS links, companies now can utilize their branch backup links or opt for cheaper ones at a fraction of the price. Although direct internet links (DIA) give a smart way to offload noncritical internet traffic, deploying it beyond which will require those links to be secured also to achieve this brings more challenge to IT organizations.

Software Defined WAN was introduced to resolve each one of these problems by decoupling the info plane from the control and management plane, developing a secure overlay and, much like a motor car GPS, providing the intelligence to route a packet to the proper destination avoiding traffic congestion related to loss, and jitter latency. Most importantly, it uses single management interface that made the management and provisioning of WAN extremely simple.

Why Cisco Viptela?

Cisco acquired Viptela, a respected SDWAN provider in 2017. Since that time, Cisco has integrated the perfect solution is into its long type of WAN routers, introduced the Catalyst 8K family (a fresh router platform that has been designed designed for SDWAN and Cloud), added more information on cloud innovations by dealing with leading Cloud PROVIDERS (CSPs) and deployed the answer at a large number of customer sites. To be able to better understand the power that Cisco Viptela brings let’s breakdown the conversation in to the following 8 key areas:

      Centralized Management:           Among the key benefits that Cisco Viptela provides may be the usage of centralized management using vManage never to only provision and monitor SDWAN fabric policies but to provide capabilities to integrate with external systems such as for example provisioning transit gateways on AWS and automating tunnel creation to a Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) thus providing the administrator with one tool to simplify solution roll out.

      Bandwidth Augmentation:           The capability to offload traffic from expensive MPLS links may be accomplished because of the fact that Viptela SDWAN is link agnostic so multiple internet links can perform exactly the same availability and performance as an individual premium link at the fraction of the purchase price and can still meet up with the same SLA

      Application Performance Optimization:           Applications have different requirements with regards to quality of service.  Some could have problems with little delay, some are sensitive to loss plus some behave when there is jitter poorly. SDWAN features such as for example TCP optimization, DRE and Application-aware routing are on the list of tools that we may use to obtain around congestion issues and we can deliver optimal quality of experience.

      Secure Direct ACCESS TO THE INTERNET:           Leveraging a long time of security expertise, the Cisco Security stack which include Firewall, IPS, URL filtering, TLS Proxy and advanced malware protection could be deployed at the branch or on Cloud using Cisco Umbrella gives customers the confidence to work with branch breakout links, saving cost and enhancing the entire application experience for cloud-based services especially.

      Middle Mile Optimization:           Colo presence offers a large amount of value to customers offering immediate access to CSPs through express routes, allows service chaining plus much more. In this example, Cisco SDWAN extends the fabric and a management interface to onboard and manage the surroundings.

                          

      Cloud OnRamp for IaaS:           The main element advantage of this feature is that it not merely allows us to utilize the same simple flow to automate connectivity to all or any key Cloud PROVIDERS which include AWS, GCP and azure, however the SDWAN Fabric is extended to the cloud once, then customers are certain to get to use all of the features open to SDWAN on the Cloud and all configurations can be carried out from exactly the same vManage Console. Using cases, the CSP provider network may be used as a backbone for passing site-to-site traffic thus reducing latency to a particular destination.

      Cloud onRamp for SaaS:           This feature provides optimal experience for SaaS applications through the use of internal probing and external telemetry received from SaaS application vendors. Microsoft Office 365 supplies a great exemplory case of this feature. As well as the probing intelligence included in SDWAN, Microsoft shall send key URLs alongside new recommendations predicated on internal dynamic data.

      Analytics:           The Cisco vAnalytics platform emerges as a Service and a graphical interface of the fabric performance having the ability to drill into specific areas such as for example network availability, carrier, application and tunnel performance. Other Cisco applications such as for example Cisco Cisco and StealthWatch ThousandEyes could also be used to supply more analytics.

In summary, because the future of networking become the cloud, the web will now play a crucial role like the role that LAN played before. Cisco Viptela SDWAN an extremely resilient and reliable solution using its rich features integrating Cloud optimization, security and advanced analytics can play a significant role in assisting organizations manage this disruptive WAN phase and you will be the building blocks for Secure Edge Service Edge (SASE), but which will be another discussion for another blog.

For more information about Cisco Viptela SDWAN, please:

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