This archive report was first published on 1 August 2019.
Overcoming the Last Mile Challenge in Enterprise WAN ¶
Published on August 1, 2019, the last mile has long been a difficult problem for WAN engineers to crack. Legacy WAN solutions like MPLS left them at a disadvantage, limiting their ability to mitigate last mile problems.
However, with the advent of SD-WAN as a Service (SDWaaS), enterprises now have a viable global solution to last mile problems. By providing a robust and converged network infrastructure with advanced monitoring and high-availability functionality, SDWaaS enables enterprises to overcome last mile challenges on the WAN.
So, what makes the last mile unique? The answer becomes clearer when you understand the 'middle mile' and how data makes its way from point A to point B. The middle mile is the underlying network infrastructure that accounts for most of what the ground data covers. Service providers can have a fair amount of control over the performance of the connectivity here, and in many cases, it can be inherently robust.
However, in the last mile, you are subjected to the quality of the connection between a given endpoint and the ISP. If that link has an issue, there isn't really an alternative path for the data to take. This becomes an even bigger challenge at a global scale when branch locations may operate in areas where connectivity isn't great to begin with.
SDWaaS solves last mile challenges on the enterprise WAN by providing enhanced connectivity in the last mile through its strategic Points of Presence (PoPs) across the globe. These PoPs also make up the SLA-backed global backbone that has helped earn SDWaaS a reputation for reliability.
SDWaaS offers several benefits in the last mile, including reducing packet loss, improving last mile resilience, and reducing latency and improving throughput. Intelligent Forward Error Correction (FEC) and packet duplication help address packet loss, while redundancy and constant monitoring enable the connection of multiple links and the ability to route traffic on two links in parallel in an HA active-active configuration.
SDWaaS also delivers traffic shaping and performance-enhancing features such as Quality of Service (QoS), bandwidth throttling, and Policy-based Routing (PbR). These features are an important part of prioritizing the performance of mission-critical apps and services. Further, SDWaaS PoPs can act as a TCP proxy server, leading to TCP clients and servers potentially using larger TCP windows and helping to enable TCP congestion control.
The last mile has finally been cracked, and SDWaaS offers enterprises a new approach to WAN connectivity that leads to significant improvements in the last mile. By coupling a robust global backbone with failover, monitoring, and performance-enhancing features, SDWaaS serves as a reliable way forward for the enterprise looking to reduce the challenges of the last mile.
