Advanced WAN Routing

Directing Traffic Over the Optimal Path to Any Enterprise or Cloud Application

The dynamic nature of a cloud-driven WAN is forcing a rethink of WAN routing. Latency and loss-sensitive applications need to be treated differently than conventional client-server applications, e-mail or Web browsing. But today’s routing infrastructure cannot make that distinction. Silver Peak’s Advanced WAN routing complements today’s routing infrastructure, addressing these challenges without forcing forklift upgrades or changes.

Limitations of Existing WAN Routing

Traditional routing protocols fall into two classes, interior, for finding routes within a single network, and exterior routing for passing routing information between networks. These older protocols typically rely on manually configured metrics to find the best path or hand off point.

SaaS and IaaS services are forcing enterprises into an environment where they are using multiple WAN networks, typically an MPLS service and one or more Internet service providers (ISPs) for Internet access. The old static ways of determining the best path no longer work well in an environment where the enterprise's “effective WAN” includes large portions of the Internet. Without a new way of doing things, a lot of traffic is routed sub-optimally with no knowledge of the end-to-end service or application being carried. Furthermore, routing decisions are being made by service providers whose interests are not necessarily aligned with the enterprise.

For instance a service provider may hold traffic on their own network, even when there is a better path available via an alternative provider, or they may have financial incentives to dump traffic off their own network as early as possible, even though they do have the best path.

Advanced Interior and Exterior Routing

Silver Peak’s advanced interior and exterior routing techniques address these issues by using real time measurements of latency, loss and other path metrics to determine the best path or paths to use for a particular service or application.  

To determine the best interior paths (between Silver Peak instances), Dynamic Path Control selects nd paths based on a tailored objective for each traffic class, such as lowest latency or highest throughput.  For instance, VoIP and Video may be routed over paths on the MPLS network and bulk data may be routed over Internet paths, with fail-over in either direction in the event of a service disruption or changing conditions. This capability also allows enterprises to leverage multiple network connections as if it were a single large network.

To determine the best exterior path, or transit gateway for an Internet hosted service such as a SaaS application like Salesforce.com, Silver Peak software measures the loss, latency and other metrics from each potential gateway to the service and distributes this information to all of the Silver Peak software instances. This means an optimal end-to-end path can be determined for each user accessing each service on a completely dynamic basis.

Additionally, by implementing Silver Peak instances in cloud network hubs, enterprises can extend the monitoring, control, security and optimization services all the way to the doorstep of SaaS services such as Salesforce.com, Office 365, and others.

Features

  • Identifies the closest egress to cloud data centers and directs traffic to a cloud service over an optimal path.
  • Dynamically selects the fastest, least-congested, or most available path for traffic by monitoring packet loss, latency, and bandwidth in real-time.
  • Dynamic Path Control Balances traffic and selects the optimum path across all any network, including private MPLS services, Internet VPNs or private line.
  • Understands more than 20 SaaS applications today, including Office365 and SalesForce, with more added daily.
  • Analyzes and optimizes IaaS and PaaS offerings, including Amazon AWS, VMware vCloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Benefits

  • One price for all SaaS applications. Accelerate Office 365, Salesforce.com and any other SaaS application with one fee per enterprise.
  • Shorten downloads and improve the quality of experience for every cloud application.
  • Optimize every SaaS application, including Office365 and SalesForce. Silver Peak supports 20 applications with more added daily.
  • Improve the performance of applications running in IaaS and PaaS offerings including Amazon AWSVMware vCloud, and Microsoft Azure.
  • Reduce costs by replacing expensive MPLS connections with aggregated, more affordable Internet links. Unity automatically balances the traffic, maximizing the WAN investment and isolating an erratic connection before it impacts the application.
  • Avoid backhauling traffic across the MPLS network by using local internet access. Backhauling traffic wastes bandwidth and degrades the performance of cloud applications, such as Salesforce or Microsoft Office 365.

Resources

  • Respected industry analyst Jim Metzler examines how SaaS and IaaS are changing the dynamics of the wide area network (WAN).
  • IDC report looks at the role hybrid cloud networks will play in the success of evolving enterprise business models.
  • As organizations adopt public cloud services and unified communications, network architects are looking for affordable ways to improve the performance and the availability of branch office connectivity. The current practice of connecting branch offices to a single MPLS connection leaves the office vulnerable to network outages while backhauling Internet traffic wastes bandwidth and adds latency
  • As enterprises extend to the cloud, more attention must be paid to the underlying network. Latency and loss rates across the Internet are as erratic as the weather. To illustrate the unpredictability, Silver Peak engaged with two leading Internet authorities to track latency and loss statistics for two weeks across hundreds of routes.