MPLS Alternative
RISE OF SD WAN
Influencing the rise in SD WAN is flexibility. MPLS connections tend to be rigid, fixed connections that can’t easily adapt to the sort of interconnectivity between branch offices that today’s dynamic networks require. They also don’t provide support for things like application recognition or sophisticated bandwidth management for latency-sensitive applications. A seeming security advantage of SD WAN is that it provides a secured and managed link between branch offices and the data center through the service provider’s internal backbone. Public internet connections do not natively provide that same level of protection.
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Looking for an alternative to MPLS?
Our Software Defined Network (SDN) powered Bonded Internet can be deployed worldwide to create a customizable SD-WAN with nearly no capital costs. Consider below, the two most common deployments for enterprises using our software-defined network (SDN/ SD-WAN) powered Bonded Internet™.
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1. Full replacement of MPLS to Hub-and-Spoke IPVPN
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REPLACE ALL SITES WITH Our SDN Powered Smart Internet
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400% increase in per-site Bandwidth
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52% decrease in cost (over T1-based MPLS)
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We know customers are looking for alternatives to Dedicated/MPLS. Replacing an entire Dedicated/MPLS WAN with a competing service is not a decision to be taken lightly. However, the advantages far outweigh the risks. Consider the ability to increase your per-site bandwidth, such that your most remote sites can take advantage of cloud-based services. Alternatively, you can also access the corporate database securely. Our Software Defined Network (SDN) powered Bonded Internet™ allows enterprise customers to create customized SD WANs for each site.
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Consider the Features:
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Dedicated Private WAN for all sites
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Managed, centralized firewall to control internet traffic
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Multi-Connection Bonding (Across Service-Providers/Speeds/Latencies for increased network reliability)
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Private or Public IP Addresses – as determined by the enterprise
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End-to-End Quality of Service for voice over IP, video conferencing, etc.
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Same-IP Failover – network outages don’t affect remote users or applications
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2.“Sore-Thumb” Sites – MPLS Add-on
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REPLACE “SORE-THUMB” SITES WITH Our SDWAN Smart Internet
Decrease Costs
Maintain Features
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3. We understand that not all of an enterprise’s sites can be easily (or affordably) put onto the corporate, Dedicated/MPLS-based Wide Area Network. In fact, from our experience, somewhere between 5% and 20% of a corporate network’s MPLS sites can make up nearly 50% of WAN costs.
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Consider a recent 49-site opportunity:
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Number of MPLS sites – 49
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Average per-site MRC for MPLS – 782.62
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Total MRC for MPLS WAN – 38,348.30
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Number of sites paying >1000.00/month for MPLS – 11 (22% of all sites)
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Monthly Recurring costs for 11 sites: 14,999.36 (39% of entire MPLS WAN costs)
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This company replaced 11 of its MPLS/Leased circuit sites with Software Defined Network (SDN/ SD WAN) powered Bonded Internet, DSL, and Cable Hub-and-Spoke WAN and tied the Private WAN into the MPLS network. By doing so, they reduced their costs from $14,999.36 to $3,856.00, saving $11,143.36 per month, or $133,720.00 per year. The company was able to connect their ‘sore thumb sites to the corporate network, with the same features (or better), and leverage low-cost internet connections in doing so.
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Why choose SDWAN over MPLS
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Cost savings
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Business agility
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Additional bandwidth
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Cloud access
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Next generation Firewall & SASE security
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Application sensing
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Comprehensive statistics
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Today’s traffic has performance requirements that can be highly unpredictable. As a result, organizations need to lease an MPLS connection for their worst-case traffic load scenario, which means that a lot of the time, expensive bandwidth is being unused, and at other times—due to the continuously expanding volume of data being generated by modern networks and devices—the MPLS connection may be constraining network connectivity.
Of course, some MPLS connections provide a sliding scale of connectivity, but even then it is limited due to its inability to understand the nature of the traffic it is handling and dynamically make adjustments accordingly.
Adding to the challenge, while all traffic needs bandwidth to function, some applications—such as voice and video—have latency requirements that need to be continuously monitored. When multiple applications are running through the same connection tunnel, latency-sensitive traffic needs to be prioritized, which requires such things as application recognition, traffic shaping, load-balancing, and prioritization between different connections that MPLS simply doesn’t provide.
SD-WAN recognizes applications and can adapt bandwidth and other services accordingly. It can initiate multiple parallel connections and then provide granular load balancing between them, and even fail over to a new connection should there be a drop in available bandwidth, as well as rate-limitless sensitive applications to ensure that latency-sensitive applications receive all the room and horsepower they require – which is why our Secure SD-WAN is powered by an intelligence algorithm designed to provide faster application steering for over 5,000 commonly used applications.