Did you know that 45% of businesses fail during their first five years of being in business? If you are in business and looking into managed services but are confused about the difference between SDN and SD-WAN, you are in the right place.
Keep reading to learn the difference between these two networking solutions to learn what is best for your business.
What Is SDN?
This stands for software-defined networking which gives users the power to control the network with software. A user has the ability to control the network centrally and also customize its performance. This can be customized to ensure that it will work for the business’s unique needs.
Even though large hosting providers or large data centers benefit from SDN you do not have to be a huge multi-tenant organization to also get the benefits. You can get a little more insight into how a business can benefit from SDN.
What Is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN stands for software-defined wide area network. This is an extension of SDN that allows enterprises to leverage a combination of transport services. Some of these transport services include LTE, MPLS, and broadband internet.
WAN uses a central function in order to direct traffic across the WAN securely and intelligently. This helps make the user experience better and it also increases the performance of the application.
Main Differences
One of the main differences between SD-WAN and SDN is that WAN delivers a wide area network that has the ability to connect multiple sites with each other. SDN instead can be used to form networks that can easily be changed depending on what an organization needs. This means that they can operate on a LAN or local area network.
Another difference is that WAN focuses on geographically distributed locations and SDN focuses inward on the service provider network or on the LAN. With an SD-WAN you have a pre-programmed network that is less complex vs an SDN which is programmable and customizable but more complex.
Pros of SD-WAN
WAN can save your company money after some time because you will not need MPLS lines (which are expensive). Another benefit is its security because it is encrypted and there is also an overlay.
It also gives you the ability to route traffic based on what makes the most sense for your business. For example, you can prioritize certain traffic to travel easily in order to give them the best performance.
WAN will also save you a lot of time and resources by setting up fully meshed sites instead of bringing up links or tunnels in each site.
Now You Know the Difference
We hope that now that we cleared up the difference between SDN and SD-WAN you can make informed business decisions moving forward.
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