Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

Since 2014, the term SD-WAN has been officially heard in the North American market. Up to now, the global installed capacity has reached 100000 nodes. Domestic SD-WAN, a "new favorite", is favored in the ICT industry, showing a trend of letting a hundred flowers blossom. SD-WAN is not a brand-new technology, but an intelligent optimization based on many traditional technologies. At present, it has been applied in various industries, and various enterprises have tasted the sweetness brought by SD-WAN.

But there are different opinions about SD-WAN. What is the origin of SD-WAN? what are the advantages of SD-WAN? Today, let's unveil the mystery of SD-WAN.

Silicon Valley began to explore SD-WAN in 2012. Compared with enterprise routers and WAN acceleration devices provided by traditional manufacturers, some start-ups began to reconstruct enterprise-level WAN solutions around relatively lightweight CPE, hoping to solve the expensive, complex and bloated problems of traditional enterprise WAN networking.

First of all, the concept of Hybrid WAN and APP Routing is introduced. Hybrid WAN refers to the monitoring and cooperation of different WAN lines on CPE, through the optimized Internet lines to share the traffic pressure of MPLS lines and reduce the dependence on expensive MPLS lines, while APP Routing refers to the ability to introduce application identification for CPE, so that more important application traffic can be allocated to lines with better transmission quality. The combination of Hybrid WAN and App Routing effectively solves the problems of high networking cost and low return on investment of traditional enterprise WAN solutions.

With the east wind of SDN, the ability of centralized management and automation has been introduced to enterprise-level WAN. Users can customize the topology and connection strategy of WAN through Portal, including traditional routing and Hybrid WAN and APP Routing mentioned above. After CPE is powered on, it can automatically authenticate and register to the management / control plane, and then the management / control plane will automatically configure and control CPE according to the networking needs of users, which avoids manual configuration and reduces the difficulty of enterprise VPN networking. At the same time, the visualization ability is also introduced into the solution, and the parameters and status of CPE/ lines / traffic / applications will be measured and collected, which will be directly presented to users through Portal or reports, which brings convenience to the WAN operation and maintenance of enterprises.

In addition to the ability to connect, security is another unavoidable rigid requirement for enterprise WAN. As an independent system, security is far from being solved by simple VPN+ access control. It is necessary to introduce some advanced security features in the firewall into CPE. However, the implementation of these advanced security features is too complex and it is difficult to integrate directly in CPE. With the rise of NFV, CPE began to take the route of x86 + virtualization, which provides a new idea for integration and allows various security capabilities to be dynamically loaded on CPE in the form of VNF. Under this background, the concept of uCPE is put forward. X86-based CPE will be used as a white box to provide an integrated platform for routing, WAN acceleration, application identification, security and other VNF. Users can purchase VNF License on demand, avoiding the investment and maintenance costs of special hardware.

Early Architectural shaping of SD-WAN

The time has come to 2015, when the early architecture of SD-WAN has taken shape. What we can see is that SD-WAN is not a brand-new technology, but a package of enterprise-level WAN networking solutions that are firmly rooted in routing, security and many other traditional technologies and transform the delivery mode through new architectures such as SDN/NFV/ white boxes. Therefore, in addition to startups, traditional enterprise routers, WAN acceleration, and security vendors also devote themselves to the ecology of SD-WAN with different understandings, showing a trend of letting a hundred flowers blossom. SD-WAN quickly opened the market of large-scale catering, retail and other industries, including some of the world's top 500 large customers, SD-WAN has become a new favorite in the industry.

The early architecture of SD-WAN focused on Internet in the networking scheme, hoping to partially replace the role of MPLS lines in enterprise networking through accelerated Internet. This has a certain impact on the MPLS VPN business of network operators, but network operators also quickly realize that this is the natural result of technological evolution, and SD-WAN also shows great advantages in flexibility and automation, so most network operators show a more open attitude towards SD-WAN and begin to follow up closely in technology and products.

In addition, considering the status and volume of network operators in the ecology, SD-WAN manufacturers also need to establish a more harmonious cooperation model with them. On the one hand, the disadvantage of Internet is that the transmission quality can not be guaranteed. If two CPE are accessed through two different basic network operators, then the transmission quality between CPE will be limited by the Internet interconnection capability between the two operators. Considering the domestic situation, enterprises may have big bottlenecks when interconnecting Internet across north and south operators, and operator Internet international export congestion is even more common. Therefore, for multinational enterprises, for the exquisite Internet acceleration technology, very often it is impossible to make bricks without straw. On the other hand, network operators have a broad customer base, a wider range of business coverage, and have great advantages in operation and maintenance, which is exactly what SD-WAN manufacturers lack. Some large customers often have thousands of branches. Although the technology has the ability of centralized control and automation, but from the perspective of channels and services, it is a completely different matter.

SD-WAN ecological coordination

Around 2016, SD-WAN began to hold hands with network operators. As network operators have relatively rich line resources, they are more attractive to network operators than the centralized connection management and automation capabilities provided by Hybrid WAN and APP Routing,SD-WAN, as well as the ability to integrate value-added services. The first idea of cooperation is that network operators provide channels and services for manufacturers' SD-WAN solutions, and both sides share the profits of SD-WAN. The second idea is to integrate SD-WAN with the stock resources of network operators, which requires adjustments to the early architecture of SD-WAN.

For Tier 1 network operators, their stock resources can cover end-to-end network connections, including a wide range of POP points, as well as high-quality dedicated transmission lines. For customers of this network, they also have access to the last kilometer, as well as the export CPE equipment of some enterprises. Therefore, for the network operators of Tier 1, the value of SD-WAN mainly lies in the centralized management of connections and the ability to automatically open. In addition, the integration capability of value-added services provided by uCPE may also lead to the development of new services in the future. In contrast to uCPE, Tier 1 network operators gradually see the value of vCPE under the background of POP cloud. VCPE provides enterprises with connectivity, security and other value-added services through cloud x86 + virtualized resources, and has the characteristics of centralized management and multi-tenant reuse. Compared with uCPE, it has certain advantages in operation and cost.

For Tier 2 network operators and MPLS VPN network operators, their stock resources include a wide range of POP points, as well as high-quality dedicated transmission lines, but do not grasp the CPE exported by enterprises, and do not have the right to speak in the last kilometer of access. Therefore, the greatest value of SD-WAN is to provide flexible access for the last kilometer. After integration, SD-WAN CPE can be put into the enterprise network, and the critical traffic of the enterprise can be automatically connected to its own POP point. This access is carried by Overlay through Internet, pop point terminates Internet, and high-quality transmission is carried out between each other through dedicated lines.

In addition to network operators, traditional IDC operators also have pop points and transmission lines, and SD-WAN also opens the door for them to move towards connected services. At the same time, the integration of SD-WAN and network operators also makes some SD-WAN manufacturers see the reduction of the threshold of connection business operation, and they begin to reserve POP points and line resources, hoping to move from the background of connection business to the front end. Pandora's box opened and the SD-WAN market was locked in chaos in early 2018.

Accompanied by SD-WAN is the convergence of cloud networks. With the maturity of cloud computing, the VPC network on the cloud is becoming a part of the enterprise network that can not be ignored. As a key form of cloud computing, hybrid cloud needs to connect the network between the data center under the cloud and the VPC on the cloud. Therefore, cloud operators have provided the VPN gateway products to achieve the connection between the enterprise data center. However, the networking capability of this kind of VPN gateway products is usually relatively simple, and it is impossible to achieve unified control with the export devices of the enterprise data center. After seeing this problem, SD-WAN manufacturers began to provide CPE VNF on the Market Place of cloud operators, hoping to push the product boundary of SD-WAN into the cloud. In addition, if the connection between the VPN gateway and the enterprise data center wants guaranteed transmission quality, it is not suitable to be carried by Overlay on Internet, but needs to be carried through the dedicated lines of network operators to ensure the transmission quality, so network operators begin to provide hybrid cloud private line products and associate the products with SD-WAN around the characteristics of cloud connection automation and on-demand service. The concept of SD-WAN has been expanded again.

From the perspective of cloud operators, cloud network convergence and SD-WAN have a different perspective from equipment manufacturers and network operators. In fact, the major OTT giants realized the importance of network infrastructure before they transformed into cloud operators, and strategically invested a lot of line resources, but in the early days they mainly used themselves. When the OTT giant transformed into a cloud operator, these lines found commercial opportunities, starting with providing a quality-guaranteed connection channel between the VPC of the two Region. When the number of connected Region becomes more and more, it evolves into a global backbone network of VPC. After connecting to this backbone network, VPC can achieve a global connection with quality assurance, and is no longer limited by the geographical scope of Region. In addition, the stock of cloud operators and the global POP points that continue to expand can serve the access of enterprise data centers. As long as you access any POP point of the global backbone network of cloud service providers, you can connect with the VPC of each Region on the cloud to achieve a little network access, and the global cloud can reach.

If you can access the data center of the enterprise, you can also access the branch sites of the enterprise, so the backbone network of cloud operators will have the ability to establish multi-point VPN for the enterprise. At this time, the connection blueprint drawn by cloud operators has gone beyond the inter-cloud and hybrid cloud scenarios, and reverse osmosis has entered the field of SD-WAN, which objectively competes with network operators. Compared with network operators, it is easier for cloud operators to build backbone networks and pop points to break through geographical restrictions and provide global access and transmission. Not only that, cloud operators began to continue to explore the tentacles of the cloud network, directly customize the enterprise CPE, and automatically point the traffic to the POP point of their backbone network, which forms a direct competition with SD-WAN equipment manufacturers. Compared with SD-WAN equipment manufacturers, cloud operators customize CPE features more streamlined, lower cost, can achieve the so-called "zero configuration into the cloud." This is the second half of 2018, the entry of cloud operators once again stirred the already restless SD-WAN market.

The wheels of SD-WAN are still rolling forward, and all the contestants in the upstream and downstream of the industry have stood on this train with their own different understandings and demands. SD-WAN in 2019 will be better and better, and we have seen more and more enterprises adopt SD-WAN solutions, promoting SD-WAN to gradually mature in China. For the relevant practitioners, it also means more opportunities, how to track the cutting-edge technology and seize the industry opportunities in this new wave?

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