List of SD-WAN Vendors

The big idea for SD-WAN Vendors is that multiple physical WAN links of any sort can be used to carry traffic without the network engineer having to do much engineering. Rather, the SD-WAN solution runs an overlay (tunneling) on top of the physical infrastructure, abstracting the actual links away.

SD-WAN forwarders (somewhat analogous to routers) monitor the performance of each physical link, and forward individual flows to remote SD-WAN forwarders across the link best able to handle that flow’s SLA requirements. Where did it get the SLA requirements? A network operator defined them in a central controller, which distributed that policy to all of the SD-WAN forwarders.

The practical upshot of all this? A company can reduce spending on private WAN links by adding cheaper broadband links to the WAN mix.

The Packet Pushers have heard from the following list of companies. Some of these vendors are Packet Pushers sponsors or podcast guests, meaning you can search our site to find more detailed information about their products and services.

128 Technology

128 Technology (128T) makes routing software that runs on x86 and, eventually, ARM platforms. The software scales linearly with cores assigned, assuming DPDK capable hardware. A dual- or quad-core Intel Atom platform typically sees ~1Gbps, while a 22-core Intel Xeon will see ~100Gbps of throughput.

A 128T network forwards at each routing node independently, but is managed centrally via their Conductor controller. 128T routing technology forwards traffic based on sessions. Each node tracks session state, forwarding packets that are a part of a known session in accordance with policy defined on the Conductor.

128T routers can peer with each other for enhanced forwarding capabilities or with non-128T routers using standard routing protocols like BGP and OSPF. 128T nodes can forward to each other, allowing for sophisticated traffic engineered, per-session paths.

A 128T network creates a dynamic, session-oriented service fabric with a number of use cases. One of these use cases is SD-WAN. In an SD-WAN scenario, paths are engineered to forward specific traffic classes over specific links, or over links with specific latency, jitter, and loss characteristics in real-time, matching an SLA centrally defined.

The 128T pricing model is unique and potentially cost-effective, billing for aggregate traffic flowing through the network each month, as opposed to a static per-device, per-port, or throughput-limited model.