Everything EVERY Business Should Know About Network Connectivity And SDWAN

In the current world of Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0, and the new normal of work from home/work from anywhere .... network connectivity and Software Defined Wide Area Networks (SDWAN) have emerged as the critical pieces enabling successful implementation of IoT, edge computing, and unified communications applications enterprise wide. Rather than jumping in blindly, here's everything EVERY business should know first.

THE EVOLUTION OF ACCESS

We live in an ever-increasing world; IoT devices are making the need for bandwidth and cloud computing on the edge. Today we will talk about the network itself and cloud connectivity. The network is the foundation of everything that is done. Everything that we access in the cloud has to get there through the internet. Internet access is the key, the foundation to the entire model.  SD-WAN is the “shock-absorbing” layer that sits in between the raw network and the cloud where applications live. At the very top of the pyramid is where you have your applications such as UCaaS and CCaaS; this is what allows clouds to talk to one another. Finally, the entire pyramid is your security layer, which is what protects the entire structure.

There are different principal and ancillary components when it comes to internet access, these include:

Principle Components

• Cable
• DSL
• Best-Effort Fiber
• Fixed 4G/5G
• Fixed Satellite
• Fixed Microwave
• Dedicated Fiber

Ancillary Components

• Auto-Failover
• WiFi Hotspots
• Cloud Connect

Cable and Best-Effort Fiber are the two main methods of getting to the cloud at a very cheap rate. Cable itself started a long time ago, at the beginning all the bandwidth was dedicated to the TV signal, but thanks to the innovation of turning TV signals into IP, an enormous amount of bandwidth has been freed up. Today while the price per meg keeps deteriorating, the amount of bandwidth that the cable companies can provide is skyrocketing thanks to DOCSIS 3.1, changing the way businesses use the cloud.

Just because there is a lot of throughput on a coax line, it doesn’t mean all the packets arrive quickly, nor does it mean that all the packets will arrive at all. It’s still an over-subscribed, best-effort, non-SLA service. Applications like voice and video are incredibly sensitive to latency and packet loss and always will be.

SD-WAN provides the opportunity to clean up packet loss and latency. SD-WAN uses redundancy and error-correction to restore packets that could be lost, and it finds quicker paths to the cloud (like WAZE) when it needs to. There is no static routing cable “telling” the router what to do – it’s making decisions on its own to protect the outcome, which is near 100% data transmission with minimal latency.

PROVIDERS FREEDOMFIRE COMMUNICATIONS WORKS WITH

So, what cable providers does FreedomFire Communications work with?

When you are talking about cable, make sure you don’t sleep on the add-ons. You must make sure that you aren’t just talking about bandwidth. A lot of providers have some extremely innovative products.

The FreedomFire Communications best-effort providers include:

FreedomFire Communications has also excelled in the dedicated fiber provider area. If you want to find out if there’s a dedicated fiber provider in your area, you can always just ask FreedomFire Communications. We have patented tools which shows us what is where and offered by whom.

We also work with international dedicated fiber providers:

Wireless Internet Access providers include:

SD-WAN PROVIDERS

When it comes to SD-WAN, FreedomFire Communications works with multiple providers.

So, what are the key drivers of an SD-WAN design?

1. Cost – How does the customer get the speed and reliability without overpaying?
2. Management Complexity – Customer’s ability to self-manage a network
3. Functionality – What abilities does the overlay (AKA, aggregate) network need to have?
4. Quality – Are there any applications that are sensitive to delay, packet loss, and jitter?
5. Security – If the customer is securing the WAN at the edge, do they want to do it with a standard edge firewall appliance, or do they want to simplify down into one SD-WAN box?

To learn more about all your options for network connectivity and SDWAN, including free assistance with network design and security, simply ask us at FreedomFire Communications.