GPSJ Autumn 2024 ONLINE - Flipbook - Page 39
IT & IT SECURITY
GPSJ
Above: Illustration by Alishia Hoyle - https://www.4bridgeworks.com/meet-the-artist-alishia-hoyle/
Top right: David Trossell. Bottom right: Graham Jarvis
packet loss. With SD-WANs, there
are often upfront costs related
to the implementation of new
infrastructure; and an SD-WAN
vendor or management model
may not be appropriate for the
needs of a particular purpose or
organisation, leading to higher
costs.
Trossell nevertheless
recognises that they have
changed Wide Area Networking
over time. He explains: “The 昀椀rst
generation of SD-WAN solutions
provided a new way of providing a
昀氀exible range of features for WAN
architecture, and so no longer
did every bit of data but have to
go via the data centre instead.”
He says they provided the ability
to create a virtual network - or
overlay - on top of any service
provider or connection, creating
greater 昀氀exibility to introducing
commodity connectivity, such as
broadband access into remote
locations.
WAN Acceleration overlay
However, despite the
overwhelming support in industry
for SD-WANs today, they often
need a boost. He argues that,
while SD-WANs provide the
administrator with a whole range
of facilities to manage how
the data 昀氀ows across physical
networks, it does not su昀케ciently
tackle latency and packet loss
at higher bandwidths that
SD-WANs are now reaching.
This is despite them having a
level of deduplication, or WAN
optimisation built into SD-WAN
products.
He elaborates – countering
vendors’ claims that SD-WANs
mitigate latency and packet loss:
“When dealing with encrypted
or previously compressed 昀椀les
formats, the SD-WAN cannot add
to the performance of the data
throughput. It is only with WAN
Acceleration with its no touch
data handling, along with data
parallelisation, arti昀椀cial intelligence
and machine learning that we
begin to see some useful data
acceleration performance levels.”
“Adding a WAN Acceleration
overlay to the SD-WAN
con昀椀guration can maximise the
throughput over the de昀椀ned WAN.
Some customers have seen 50
times the improvement over long
distances.” He believes that the
additional performance given by
WAN Acceleration shows that
organisations shouldn’t put all
their eggs in one basket when
it comes to the need to improve
data 昀氀ows, network management
and achieve higher performance.
Much depends on the speed
of the WAN. Proofs of concept
can show whether a WAN or an
SD-WAN can bene昀椀t from WAN
Acceleration by adding to the data
昀氀ow. “Slow protocols such as live
video and voice are not suitable
for WAN Acceleration, as there is
not enough data available for the
AI to work e昀昀ectively,” he explains.
Other reasons for avoiding
putting all of one’s eggs in a
basket include vendor lock-ins,
the lack of ability to complete
automate network management
and network administration –
including in the mitigation of
latency and packet loss. So,
organisations shouldn’t put all
their eggs in one basket – at
Easter or at any time of the
year – particularly because
WAN Acceleration has a track
record with organisations, such
as Investec Private Bank, and
the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) in the US, of overcoming
connectivity challenges and
improving overall network
resilience without the need to
invest in new infrastructure or to
add additional bandwidth.
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SECTOR JOURNAL WINTER 2024/2025
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