What is SD-WAN?

The problem it solves

Businesses with several locations need each office to reach the internet, cloud apps and sometimes the other offices. Traditionally, that meant expensive private lines, or each office managed separately with its own firewall settings.

What SD-WAN does

SD-WAN stands for software-defined wide area network. In plain terms:

• It uses several connections at once, such as fiber, cable and cellular, at each location.
• It chooses the best path for each kind of traffic. Phone and video calls go over the connection with the lowest delay. Large downloads go wherever there is room.
• It fails over automatically. If one connection drops or gets worse, traffic moves to another without people noticing.
• It is managed centrally. Settings for every location are set and monitored from one place.
• It links offices securely over ordinary internet connections.

Is it right for you?

SD-WAN makes the most sense for businesses with:

• More than one location.
• Heavy use of calls, video or cloud applications that suffer when a connection is poor.
• Two internet connections at a site and a need to use both well.

A single small office may get most of the benefit from a good firewall and a second internet connection with automatic failover.