Specifications

Table 9. uCPE advantages (continued)

Current model uCPE

Every application requires an individual CPE, each with long

upgrade cycles.

• Independent hardware and software life cycles that enable

agility in new services delivery

• Dynamic scale-up and scale-out

SD-WAN deployment

Traditionally, wide area networks (WANs) were built over private multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) connections. This provided the

security, quality, and class of service (QoS/CoS) that is required by dominant client/server communications from branch-to-data center

traffic. Although this configuration is secure and deterministic, it is highly rigid and expensive.

SD-WAN provides a secure and encrypted software-defined virtual network that overlays existing physical network technologies. This

overlay provides a transport/access solution that allows you to manage the disparate underlay networks such as MPLS, Broadband as a

single intelligent fabric. The overlay also provides application-aware routing, zero-touch provisioning, traffic steering, SLA verification, self-

healing, visualization, and common centralized policy management of the network.

The examples that are shown are the most common SD-WAN use cases. The SD-WAN solution in these examples provides a common

transport/access agnostic, centrally managed, dynamic application-aware routing solution that you can use in many different ways.

MPLS off-load

To reduce the investment in MPLS bandwidth, when using low-cost broadband against higher-cost MPLS, less mission-critical traffic is

typically off-loaded onto lower-cost Internet. Services that require QoS/CoS such as VoIP, are sent over MPLS where edge-to-edge

prioritization is supported.

You can firewall Internet traffic via local Internet breakout at the premise or use as a low-cost transport alternative for linking branch

locations to each other or centralized data centers over an encrypted tunnel. Through centralized policy management and application-

based aware routing, the overlay network can make decisions dynamically and intelligently.

This example may also serve as a primary/back-up option if you want to use MPLS as primary and Internet as a secondary back-up.

Figure 4. MPLS off-load

Dual Internet WAN

This solution offers support for a bring your own access (BYOA) deployment model.

Due to the nature of the Internet, underlying transports offer only best effort, no edge-to-edge QoS/CoS. However, you can offset this

limitation by selecting redundant providers that offer different peering points to the Internet. As network conditions fluctuate, the dynamic

routing intelligence constantly searches for the best possible path and routes traffic accordingly. This dynamic routing ensures better

performance than a single broadband link or broadband links of the same carrier.

The integrated firewall features and overlay link encryption provide a high level of security. Also, recent SD-WAN software innovations

include self-healing and packet-loss recovery capabilities that improve Internet and MPLS.

Features