SearchEnterpriseWAN.com recently published an article from Jessica Scarpati about performance issues that may arise from using Internet as a backbone for Cloud and SaaS traffic ("Backhaul Internet traffic over the WAN? Cloud, SaaS performance may suffer"). Jessica rightfully insists on the lack of control across the Internet: "You can't write an SLA for the Internet", "Assessing SaaS performance (…) over the Internet is nearly impossible since the parameters constantly fluctuate"; etc.
On the other hand, Internet ubiquity and low cost makes it impossible to resist for Cloud and SaaS based applications, and already appealing for VPN traffic. So the question is no more "Internet or not Internet" but rather "how to get Internet benefits without its weaknesses?" This is becoming an important question that WAN governance has to answer.
A solution to this dilemma is to combine a predictable MPLS network with larger, cheaper but less stable Internet. While this is not a new situation, reality is that in most case this combination is "either MPLS or Internet (as a backup)"; in some case, router-based static PBR (policy based routing) is painfully configured to send low critical traffic to Internet and critical applications to MPLS. None brought the expected benefits, performance and agility that enterprises are looking for.
On the other hand, Dynamic WAN selection using real-time network performance assessment and application performance objectives allows enterprises to get the best of Internet (large bandwidth, access to public Cloud and SaaS) while assuring the performance of their critical applications with MPLS networks. Because of the variability of networks' performance and the dynamicity of the application traffic, dynamic WAN selection requires the ability of Autonomic Networking to learn and adapt in real-time to any situation and solve complex cases, like when several networks match the objectives – or none of them. Real life shows that Internet may be faster than MPLS – or not – or not everywhere - or not always… So voice and SAP can use Internet – or not – or not everywhere – or not always… How would you manage this manually?
Properly unified from an application performance point of view, hybrid networks can move us from the classical Fast OR Large? dilemma to a more appealing Fast + XXL situation.
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