SD Wan stands for “Software Defined Wan”. Its primary focus for companies is enabling business to use a range of internet services together to reduce cost and increase reliability and scalability. There are a number of providers who provider Virtual and Hardware devices for this e.g. Citrix Netscaler , Fortinet’s Fortigate Product and Junipers Routers to name a few.

Some features below are how SD Wan differences from your standard bonding of WAN’s

Application Aware

SD Wan devices understand all the application going through their network. Using this information it can route particular traffic over different links. For example a company would have a 5mb leased line connection and a fast fibelink with a local telco. It can route all unimportant traffic such as facebook, youtube and spotify over the cheap link and important traffic such as Outlook 365 Mapi connections and VOIP to the dedicated leased line connection

Dynamic Monitoring and route changes

SD Devices constantly tests the speed and quality of each connection and routes traffic in real time with this information. For example if a company had a 4g connection and a normal ADSL2 connection , it can route all downward traffic down the ADSL2 connection , then upload all traffic via the 4g connection , which add significant speed advantages to business’ who cannot get a faster connection locally.

For Outside Operations such as mining

Usually sites being setup outdoors such as building and mining sites will utilise cell towers at the beginning for internet connectivity. There remote sites usually only have a single cellular tower which means this single 4g connection is shared between the local town. Increasing the number of 4g connections to this tower also increases your bandwidth. SD Wans makes it easier to add these without worrying about traffic routing