SD-WAN

To address the challenges faced by traditional enterprise networks for connectivity services such as circuit costs, application experience control, long service provisioning and complex management, a more flexible solution is required. Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions address these challenges and bring additional benefits.

Think of a software-defined network (SDN) as the foundation for a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN). SD-WAN uses software and a centralised cloud-based controller to intelligently steer traffic across the WAN. SD-WAN handles traffic based on priority, quality of service and security requirements in accordance with business needs.

Unlike traditional WAN architecture, the SD-WAN model is designed to fully support applications hosted in on-premise data centres, public or private clouds and SaaS solutions such as Salesfore.com, Office365 and Dropbox, while delivering the highest levels of application performance.

The Solution

The Flexgrid SD-WAN solution powered by Juniper Smart Session Router provides flexible and straightforward on-demand WAN interconnection with better service experience between branches, headquarters, data centres, and the cloud. With compelling features such as application-based intelligent traffic steering, optimal link selection, tunnel-less, adaptive encryption, zero-touch provisioning, virtual network segregation, QoS and WAN optimisation.

Simplicity

The SD-WAN solution can use standard hub-and-spoke or full-mesh topology options without the need for legacy tunnels. Each physical site can be deployed with single or multiple SD-WAN gateways connected to various circuit types. The Session Smart Routing software can run on hardware included with the service, virtual machines or in the public cloud. The entire = SD-WAN solution can be managed from a centralised Cloud console and as a managed service by Flexgrid.

Agility

The SD-WAN solution supports a variety of Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) methods. This allows devices to be sent out to customer locations without complex and time consuming pre-staging requirements.

Security

The SD-WAN solution uses a Zero trust network access (ZTNA) model where by default, all traffic is denied and must be permitted by policy. Traffic authentication is provided on a hop-by-hop basis and all traffic can be controlled via the distributed Firewall which is FIPS-140-2 certified, ICSA and PCI certified.

The SD-WAN solution uses adaptive encryption on each device to inspect traffic and determine if the data about to be sent over the WAN has already been encrypted. When encrypted, the adaptive encryption feature avoids the delay and performance impact of unnecessary double encryption. This dramatically increases the performance and efficiency of the overall solution.

Performance

The SD-WAN solution monitors the performance of applications flowing through the WAN using active monitoring. This traffic monitoring method measures the actual traffic and applications flowing across the customer network instead of simulated traffic between routers. This method provides improved visibility of issues and policy control. The lack of a traditional IPSEC tunnel model coupled with other enhancements can remove packet overhead, resulting in 30-50% bandwidth saving.

Savings

The combination of the cost-efficient service-oriented SD-WAN solution, adaptive tunnel-less encryption and WAN connectivity options provided by Flexgrid demonstrate considerable savings compared to other Enterprise-class SD-WAN solutions.

Our SD-WAN solution is delivered as a cloud service bringing automated operations and service levels to the WAN edge, and when used in conjunction with Juniper Mist wired and wireless devices, we can provide a single full-stack solution to manage both the LAN and the WAN as one.

Managed service

24x7 managed SD-WAN service from the UK

Mixed transport

Enables organisations to leverage any combination of public and private transport services (e.g. broadband Internet, 5G, etc.) to securely connect users to apps and each other

Traffic steering

Provides compelling features such as application-based intelligent traffic steering, optimal link selection, intelligent acceleration, and intelligent O&M

Application set

Circa 600 applications already in the controller

Zero touch provisioning

Adopts a zero touch provisioning approach to deploying new circuits

Cloud managed

Manage your entire WAN from anywhere

Connectivity options

Can use existing connectivity for rapid deployment or Flexgrid can provide the underlying circuits acting as a single service provider

MPLS

Can be deployed at some sites retaining MPLS (for example) at others or deployed across the entire WAN

Licensing

One simple license per device, based on the actual bandwidth usage on the router

Get Technical

SD-WAN applies the principles of software-defined networking (SDN) to a business WAN connection; separating the data plane and control plane of the network and abstracting it into a virtualised service.

The architecture of SD-WAN virtualises numerous components of a traditional legacy network (e.g. secure routing, application optimisation, quality of service) and centralises the network management via a cloud-based “orchestrator” which intelligently controls traffic flows across the corporate network.

Leveraging the powerful application identification engine and link quality detection engine, the SD-WAN solution can provide intelligent traffic steering based on the application priority, link quality, load balancing, and bandwidth utilisation.