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

MPLS is considered the most perfect line interconnection between two network endpoints, and the idea behind MPLS's advantage is that it traverses infrastructure operated only by a single operator (usually a local ILEC), thus providing excellent security and performance. Is this better than SD-WAN?SD-WAN? what's the difference between SD-WAN?SD-WAN and MPLS?

Can the new SD-WAN (David) become the simplest by defeating the traditional advanced interconnection (Goliath MPLS)? Today we will trace the comparison and prospects of the two one by one.

Looking back at MPLS, Multiprotocol label switching uses tags instead of transferring data from one switch to the next. Because tags are faster and more optimized than *, MPLS will in principle be processed faster, with lower latency, which requires the MPLS infrastructure to be managed by a single service provider, which is usually your local telecom company. In this setting, endpoints do not need to communicate with any other IP network and can rely on their internal switches to access MPLS and understand MPLS tags, which speeds up processing and ensures security because traffic can be isolated from any other client. Because MPLS transport is dedicated to a single enterprise client, how practical and important are these advantages of MPLS and the comparison between performance and security of SD-WAN?

In fact, performance and security are critical because we already know that SD-WAN-based solutions rely on intelligent management of cost-effective broadband lines and have significant price advantages over MPLS, so do the cost differences in MPLS prove the promised performance and security advantages?

Before we solve this problem, let's take a look at how SD-WAN runs at a high level. SD-WAN is designed to work in an environment that is somewhat independent of the underlying WAN transport, that is, the end user can choose to utilize any type of WAN transport, such as DSL,Cable,T1,3G,4G, LTE or the upcoming 5G wireless, SD-WAN creates an overlay tunnel, similar to the VPN tunnel, intelligently guides packets through the WAN path, and can be transmitted using a variety of WAN The key aspect is that SD-WAN intelligently monitors and manages data flows so that performance can be optimized on a per-application basis.

In modern SD-WAN routers, the ability to understand and optimize application flow has reached an amazing level, which can reduce network problems and solve them in real time, thereby protecting ongoing application flows from network problems, including network undervoltage or WAN outages. Unlike MPLS, SD-WAN can respond to changing transmission conditions. Therefore, it does not rely on any one transmission to remain problem-free. In the case of MPLS, if there is a problem with your MPLS transport, there is no other way to repair your network except to repair the MPLS transport, while SD-WAN is not, because you have multiple WAN transports, in fact, most WAN transport problems can be translated into planned non-emergency maintenance, as long as they are managed by modern SD-WAN solutions.

Of course, in addition to focusing on these advantages, we will also focus on the most important issues of security performance.

Security problems on the public Internet occur frequently, but using SD-WAN, looking at the connection between endpoints, such as two branches of a business, encrypts the overlay tunnel that loads packets on that segment, and SD-WAN allows users to inject encrypted traffic into the overlay tunnel, so SD-WAN is 100% secure in nature, while MPLS has no specific security advantage over SD-WAN. Another thing to keep in mind is that if the packet flow needs to communicate with the server in the public cloud, then MPLS will be accessed over the public Internet.

How about the cost of both?

MPLS has a significant cost disadvantage, and SD-WAN can provide a higher order of magnitude of bandwidth, and the cost is only a fraction of it, especially for today's hybrid cloud requirements, in which at least part of the MPLS traffic needs to pass through the public Internet, so the cost of MPLS can become too high and impractical very quickly.

Conclusion:

So, does this mean that you need to tear up your MPLS service and install SD-WAN? Yes, but there may be a way to implement this change in phases, rather than upgrading MPLS to higher levels of throughput and cost, where you can bring cheap bandwidth through SD-WAN and have a hybrid network of SD-WAN and MPLS, which is actually a fairly common use case for SD-WAN, that is, MPLS enhancements rather than complete replacements. However, we feel that after you experience the performance and value of SD-WAN in the network, you will soon turn to 100%SD-WAN.

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