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Comparing SD WAN costs has just became a little easier.
One of the challenges IT teams face when shortlisting SD WAN vendors is setting budgets and establishing approximate costs. Netify are announcing the release of our SD WAN pricing tool which currently supports Versa (Gartner SD WAN leader).
With the free quoting platform, users are empowered to:
- Request SD WAN overlay hardware with remote user costs, initially from Versa with other vendors to follow.
- SD WAN underlay pricing from five service providers to support UK, North American and global sites.
Compare both SD WAN vendors and request connectivity pricing.
The majority of hype across SD WAN capability revolves around cost savings. In reality, the outcome of low pricing could result in detrimental effects across application performance and uptime. One of the main selling points of SD WAN is savings but could using low cost Internet connectivity perform poorly vs traditional MPLS circuits?
“Using the Internet saves money but be mindful of the providers SLA, reach, latency and jitter performance.”
Performance remains important when evaluating Internet underlay connectivity for SD WAN.
While we fully understand that budget is important, there is a clear need to align your WAN to your specific business requirements. This isn't to say SD WAN cannot save you money, the technology is an enabler to sophisticated features and cost reduction where required.
What to consider with SD WAN and cost savings?
1. Using the Internet saves money but be mindful of the providers SLA, reach, latency and jitter performance.
2. Network architecture should surround the need to design for application performance and not simply cost.
3. Be mindful of providers marketing their capability as vastly reducing cost vs MPLS, the right connection is based on analysis of needs.
4. SD WAN costs range from £50 per month for 3G/4G and Broadband to over £1000 for Ethernet connectivity depending on location and bandwidth.
Configuring each location is made simple across primary and failover SD WAN.
With any good WAN design, a hybrid of network services is necessary depending on any given statement of requirements. The SD WAN marketplace offers almost every architecture to meet the demands of every business from three site SME networks to large Global Enterprise implementations.
Low-cost Internet connectivity vs public IP.
SD WAN technology offers the next level of application treatment both from the perspective of prioritization (QoS - Quality of Service) and policies to sense traffic conditions. With every provider, marketing and opinion will sell the SD WAN dream based on features and benefits.
Just as a car manufacturer may sell traction control as a feature, you wouldn’t necessarily drive the same way in winter conditions as you would in the summer. And just as an SD WAN provider will tell you not to worry about your applications, as the technology will sort everything, your goal should always be to create the best possible underlying connectivity to support your business regardless of features.
“In order to deliver SD WAN access to remote workers, connectivity is often achieved via 4G/5G wireless Internet or fixed WiFI from wherever the user is situated.”
4G and 5G cellular have become key for small offices, home workers and mobile users.
The majority of SD WAN 'cost saving marketing hype' is created by using the Internet as the underlying platform to deliver VPN connectivity. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this approach by the way, I’m just pointing out the facts. One of the drivers behind SD WAN growth is the need to access public Cloud services together with location independence. In order to deliver SD WAN access to remote workers, connectivity is often achieved via 4G/5G wireless Internet or fixed WiFI from wherever the user is situated.
Where the users' connectivity is not a constant, SD WAN technology offers a significant capability to ensure a consistent level of service. In this respect, a software-based WAN is the right choice to meet the demands of unknown Internet connections. Without diverting from the topic of this article, an SD WAN client or device will make the best use of any given connection from the most terrible of throttled hotel WiFI ISP connections to weak 4G/5G in the corner of your garden. However, for your main data center, HQ to branch and branch to branch connections, relying on the lowest in country or per location ISP service is a risky strategy.
The risk is generated from a number of factors:
What about using a single public Internet backbone?
Public IP (i.e. using a single ISP) offers predictable traffic performance. In many ways, Internet backbones today are comparable to private MPLS VPRn (Virtual Private Routed Network). MPLS is, in fact, a traffic engineering protocol used both on the Internet and Private based VPN solutions (MPLS, VPLS, VLL). The major difference between using the Internet vs private WAN services such as MPLS is the removal of end to end Quality of Service. However, if bandwidth is good, latency and jitter are acceptable, QoS is not needed. With SD WAN, we need to remember that while end to end QoS may not exist, the actual local traffic prioritization is much more granular.
With significant control of user and application attributes, the user environment is sensed and improved upon using application acceleration or simple traffic prioritization. As a further benefit, security policies are also set to the same detail level to further meet the demands of today's data networks. In short, a single ISP backbone for data center, HQ and branch sites offers similar everyday performance to MPLS with the flexibility to access Cloud applications. And, the equivalent public connection is generally cheaper vs MPLS.
What about SD WAN over MPLS?
The major difference between using the Internet vs private WAN services such as MPLS is the removal of end to end Quality of Service. While SD WAN is marketed as version 2 of the IPSec Internet VPN, the technology is designed to be agnostic. In other words, the connectivity type (Internet, private short-haul circuit etc) is supported via a single SD WAN device. If we recall the beginning of this article, good WAN architecture should be a hybrid. There are selected providers offering an SD WAN connection with the ability to access private and public VPN from every circuit. And this perhaps takes us back to the conversation about cost savings. An SD WAN VPN with the capability/feature to access private and public WAN together with the major benefits of software WAN such as reporting, security and so forth results in higher costs.
“With less complexity, comes less expense.”
Networks are simplified using Software WAN solutions.
However, these providers offer lower cost options for remote and branch users meaning hybrid designs meet budget demands (where appropriate) allowing your business to spend more on mission-critical sites.
Latency and Jitter performance across single ISP backbones is generally good as the Internet becomes more mature. In addition, service providers offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement). Fig 1 shows this in more detail.
SD WAN offers client and low-cost CE (Customer Edge) devices. Software WAN intelligence is (or should be) located within a centralized management server. The result of locating intelligence outside of the device is that hardware design is simplified. With less complexity, comes less expense. If we then align using lower cost public IP (single ISP backbone where possible), the result should be cost savings across your WAN. SD WAN for single, remote users, is serviced via a secure client.
The SD WAN client is, of course, low-cost infrastructure meaning further cost savings. While technology such as MPLS offers remote access, MPLS VPN does not offer the same traffic sensing treatment. The result of SD WAN remote capability is that software clients are often used to increase user productivity as applications become more accessible with higher performance. The net result means the business is more productive which is again better for the Enterprise bottom line.
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