Unlocking the Power of SD-WAN and Hyperscalers‘ Backbone Highways

By Matej Kultan
Systems Engineer, Versa Networks
January 5, 2024

In today’s digital era, businesses require seamless connectivity and optimal application performance across their globally dispersed sites to stay productive. Combining Versa Networks Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) with Hyperscalers‘ “private highways” is an innovative approach to achieve this goal. This case study presents a customer use case where a global enterprise successfully reduces latency and enhances network performance.

Global Internet Site-to-Site Connectivity with Low Latency

Imagine an enterprise with sites scattered across different regions worldwide. Their primary objective is to establish flexible and reliable end-to-end connectivity, predominantly based on an Internet underlay. However, their applications, such as MS Teams, Zoom, and Webex, demand the lowest possible latency to ensure seamless communication and collaboration. Meanwhile, the enterprise seeks to optimize costs by offloading non-latency-sensitive traffic over the best-effort Internet.

Solution Overview

To meet the enterprise’s latency requirements, the breakthrough lies in leveraging Hyperscalers‘ backbones as an additional underlay for the SD-WAN solution. Private hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google offer superior network performance between regions compared to the public Internet, akin to choosing private highways over public roads.

The Versa SD-WAN Router monitors all available paths and dynamically determines whether to route premium, latency-sensitive traffic over the public Internet or tunnel it through the Hyperscaler backbone based on real-time path parameters. The key benefit for branch users is an enhanced experience with reduced delay, jitter, and packet loss compared to the unguaranteed SLAs of public Internet connections. Versa SD-WAN Routers achieve this by establishing IPSec-in-IPSec from each applicable SD-WAN branch to the closest Hyperscaler PoP, enabling SLA path monitoring, and setting SD-WAN policies for traffic steering based on appropriate SLA criteria.

Solution Benefits

The Solution offers significant advantages for the globally operating enterprise in this use case:

1. Improved Real-time Traffic Experience:

   The Versa SD-WAN’s packet steering, traffic engineering, and packet loss reduction capabilities ensure optimal performance for business-critical applications. Users enjoy a consistent experience across all locations, regardless of the underlying transport network.

   

2. Cost Optimization:

   By leveraging local Internet circuits for best-effort traffic and integrating the Hyperscaler backbone for latency-critical traffic, the enterprise can reduce costs associated with dedicated MPLS links. This cost optimization allows for more efficient resource allocation and potential investment in other business initiatives.

   

3. Enhanced Deployment Agility:

   Versa’s cloud-based SD-WAN deployment and management capabilities make it seamless for the enterprise to provision, deploy, and monitor the network across global sites. This agility, coupled with the use of any Internet circuits, enables rapid scaling and adaptability to changing business needs.

   

Technological Solution Advantages

The Versa SD-WAN implementation has unique advantages:

1. Instant SD-WAN Overlay with Single Template:

   Versa SD-WAN enables automatic propagation of reachability information between sites, allowing new sites to form full-mesh over Internet and Hyperscaler backbone connectivity within seconds. Only a Single configuration template is required to be applied on SD-WAN Routers and a dynamic control-plane ensures effortless integration.

   

2. Enhanced Performance:

   The Hyperscaler backbone typically delivers better latency and jitter performance compared to basic Internet connectivity. Periodic SLA monitoring ensures that the Hyperscaler backbone is utilized only when required, maintaining optimal network performance.

   

3. Real-time Application Path Selection:

   SD-WAN intelligently selects the best path for each application based on individual SLAs and network quality for site-to-site communication. Network administrators define path selection based on criteria such as lowest latency, lowest loss, lowest jitter, or even audio and video quality perception based on Mean Opinion Score (MOS) values. The Hyperscaler backbone is utilized when it provides better performance after crossing application-specific SLA thresholds.

   

4. Single Device SD-WAN Solution:

   The Versa SD-WAN Router eliminates the need for additional hardware for first-mile tunneling. The Versa SD-WAN Router encapsulates multiple SD-WAN tunnels into an additional IPSec tunnel eliminating the need for extra on-the-stick hardware to access the Hyperscalers’ backbone.

   

5. Any Hyperscaler:

   The Versa SD-WAN Router is compatible with any Hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, Google, etc.) and cloud mid-mile transits (e.g. Teridion, Mode, etc.). The easy-to-reproduce template configuration can scale to any number of SD-WAN branches and multiple Hyperscalers’ networks simultaneously.

   

6. NaaS Solution:

   Enterprises have the flexibility to choose a pure Network as a Service (NaaS) option, eliminating the need for deploying their virtual network appliance at the Hyperscaler PoP. The enterprise can deploy solutions with cloud services such as VPCs, VPC Peerings, Transit Gateways or leverage an established mid-mile transit provider who selects the most optimal Hyperscaler for the enterprises’ network needs.

   

7. Reducing MPLS Costs:

   As business-critical applications are offloaded to the Hyperscaler backbone, the enterprise can dismantle MPLS connections from SD-WAN sites, reducing associated costs while maintaining acceptable SLAs.

   

Summary

Implementing Versa SD-WAN with Hyperscalers’ backbones enables the global enterprise to address its end-to-end connectivity needs effectively. By combining local Internet circuits and Hyperscalers’ backbones with Versa SD-WAN Routers, the enterprise achieves optimal performance for business-critical traffic flows while optimizing costs. With strict SLA enforcement and advanced traffic engineering capabilities, Versa SD-WAN ensures a reliable and high-quality user experience, meeting the enterprise’s business requirements.