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How Difficult Is SD-WAN?

SD-WAN is going to save us all, right? It’s the hot, new thing that everyone wants in their network and it’s the only solution to our routing problems. Everyone is talking about it. Podcasters can’t stop telling everyone how much you need it, even if they suggest you do it yourself instead of trying to convince someone else to do it for you.

But Daniel Dib wanted to take a look at SD-WAN and how difficult it really was to implement. And not just the tech side of things. As always, Daniel has some very astute observations about the politics and the business that is supported by SD-WAN. And, as is often the case, the ancillary pieces around the technology are the things that tend to create more issues than just typing away on the CLI.

Here’s a great excerpt from Daniel’s list of all the things you need to consider with SD-WAN:

When reading the marketing, everything looks simple, just send a router to site, run ZTP and be done with it. What is required to run ZTP though? There are things that you need to be aware of. There are conditions to be met such as having an internet transport and that the transport needs to have an IP address via DHCP. Trying to get a public IP via DHCP from a SP is no easy task, let me tell you… Imagine having planned for a implementation, sending out routers to all branches, which could be thousands, only to realize that your design does not support ZTP. A person with experience will warn you in time. This person will also know what works, doesn’t work, what bugs to avoid, and what the best software to run is.

There’s a lot more great stuff in his post right here: How Difficult is SD-WAN?

About Tom Hollingsworth

Tom Hollingsworth is a networking professional, blogger, and speaker on advanced technology topics. He is also an organizer for networking and wireless for Tech Field Day.  His blog can be found at https://networkingnerd.net/

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