The 2018 Guide to WAN Architecture and Design - Part 3: The SD-WAN and the SD-Branch Office Ecosystem

A discussion of wide area networking is extremely timely for two reasons. One reason is that for most of the last fifteen years there has been little investment in the development of new WAN technologies and services. Hence, until recently there hadn't been a fundamentally new WAN technology or service introduced into the marketplace since the turn of the century. That situation began to change a couple of years ago with the introduction of a new class of WAN solution that is typically referred to as a Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN). Most of these SD-WAN solutions focus on providing connectivity between the users in a company's branch offices and the resources they need to access in both internal and external data centers. 

A discussion of the WAN edge is also very timely. One reason for that is the burgeoning use of the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, Gartner has forecasted that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide by the end of 2017, up 31% from 2016, and that there will be 20.4 billion connected things by 2020. Another reason why a discussion of the WAN edge is timely is that several branch office solutions that leverage SDN and NFV are being brought to market. These solutions are often referred to as software defined branch office solutions (SD-Branch). While these solutions exhibit many similarities, there are many fundamental differences amongst the solutions.   Continue reading ...