How To Define Real Software Defined Networking Solutions
The SDN term has picked up momentum and is almost a marketing term thrown around like Cloud or UC. Just like the term cloud is loosely defined, SDN has likewise started sharing the same unfortunate clarity.
When we talk about SDN or SD-WAN, there are a few minimum requirements to really qualify for the term.
– It is a network service or an overlay that is going to replace what is a more traditional type wan service like an MPLS service. Meaning a private network provided to a person from a networking provider.
– This solution is provisioned and you interact with it in some sort of portal or maybe even cloud driven.
– Automatic failover. If you plug in two connections, it needs to fail-over to the other.
With these three common denominators to define SDN, you can wash out all of those tricky claims many people are making about their “SDN solutions” and focus on the real solutions. It’s a hot and trendy term, so following this definition will save you a lot of frustration of wasting time with solution offers that are somewhat counterfeit or misleading.
Key SD-WAN Features
The providers that are offering legitimate SDN solutions are able to provide a key feature as it relates to performance. For example, let’s examine a scenario where you have your two internet connections. There is an application like hosted VoIP and a low-cost bandwidth solution like cable backed up with a DSL connection. Neither of those connections are bulletproof. A key feature functionality is the ability to adapt to performance of the environment in real-time. Look at latency with the cable and DSL along with jitter and packet loss as all three affect the voice quality. Good SDN solutions will be able to take those into account in real time and adapt a voice call as it relates to the real time performance of the network. When problematic connections arise, it could reroute to the secondary link without disrupting the call. All that is done without having to touch the box since it’s automated.
In a traditional router environment, you can load balance two connections as well as an automatic failover. But typically you will do that based upon hard downs. That will require manual swapping and restarting connections which cause interruptions. SD-WAN does all that without any perceived disruptions or manual servicing.
A bonus feature is the ability to alert. Set notifications to alert about an outage and gain visibility on who is doing what within your network environment.
Where is SDN a Good Solution?
Case Study #1
In this example, the potential user has the following description:
– Retail Store Chain
– Hundreds of branches
– Hosted VoIP customer
– Private cloud (everything remote to branch)
– Dual provider MPLS T-1 based WAN (failover)
The problems this user faces are:
– Bandwidth starvation
– New applications
– Remain PCI compliant
– Retain similar cost structure
In the T-1 world, the only real other option is to add another T-1 which may be around $250/month extra. Now taking a look at the alternative, let’s say you grab a fiber connection with 100 megs. You have the opportunity to get some lower cost bandwidth. Then you back it up with a 25 meg 4G solution and have the 100 meg SDN overlay. They’ll have the new ability to run their new applications and even save a little bit of money.
Case Study #2
In this example, Telarus offers its experience with switching to SDN. Their situation was as such:
– Technology Company
– 70 employees
– Hosted VoIP customer
– Fairly heavy SaaS users for production platforms
– Office 365 customer
– Few internal servers hosting applications
The hosted VoIP solution is key to their environment. They had a 100 meg coax and a 100 meg fiber connection with fiber being primary. With testing the SDN solution, they experienced a bunch of outages lasting about an hour or two each. For most employees, no one even knew about those outages since the automatic failover kicked in. With doing the math, an hour of downtime for them is about $3,500/month. Within 8 or so business days, there were about eight of those outages which would have been about $20,000 lost based on productivity. So the auto failover is a key piece. The reduced down time will result in the service paying for itself over the period of a year had the SDN not been in place and those outages taking their toll.
The takeaway here is that IT professionals everywhere are really starting to take interest in the SD-WAN space. The hope being twofold: replace an expensive MPLS with something less expensive and also the performance side.
To take advantage of free assistance to engineer and design a SDN solution for your network…including a comparison of available providers with rate quotes…simply ask at the link below. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.