The Best SD-WAN Vendors: Reduce Packet Loss on International Routes

April 21, 2021 Mike Smith

Which SD-WAN vendors are the best for reducing packet loss on international routes?

Mike Smith explains the 3 types of SD-WAN vendors, and tells you which type will probably be best for keeping packet loss at a minimum, when sending data between global sites. He also tells you a couple extra tidbits you’ll want to know.

Want Mike’s recommendations on the best SD-WAN vendors your company should quote, based on your requirements? Click the button to ask him today.

About Mike
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on LinkedInTwitter or SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is trying to send large files in between international sites and is experiencing a lot of packet loss.

So, say for instance, you’re sending large CAD or CAM files, and you’re trying to send it from Los Angeles to China, and there’s a lot of complaints of extremely slow applications, a lot of stuff isn’t coming through correctly, things like that.

And you’re wondering, “how do we resolve this?

Well, back in the day, we’d be looking into a private line, like an E1 or a T1 line, going from the United States to China. And so, you’d probably be looking at around five to $10,000 a month for 1.5 to 2 megs worth of bandwidth.

Well, these days, obviously that’s just not the best way to do it anymore.

What about SD-WAN?

So, you’re probably hearing a little bit about SD-WAN, and you’re wondering, “Hey, well, is SD-WAN a good solution to help us out?

Well, it might be, but it depends on the type of SD-WAN solution that we’re talking about.

So, if you want to know more about the different types of SD-WAN architecture, refer to my other video that I’ve made called the three types of SD-WAN architecture. That will give you a little bit of background so I don’t have to review all that on this video.

But so, I would say if you’re looking into an on-prem only solution, that probably won’t do it because what that is, is that’s just deploying an SD-WAN appliance at each of your sites, so your LA site and your China site, and then it’s using the public internet to connect those. That’s essentially what you’re doing today, you’re trying to set up a VPN and running it that way and running into a problem. So, an on-prem only SD-WAN solution is probably not going to be your best bet.

The Best SD-WAN Vendors - Reduce Packet Loss on International Routes

Cloud-Enabled

The other option you can look into is a cloud enabled solution. So, what that is, is you get an SD-WAN appliance to each of your sites and each of those SD-WAN appliances connects to a SD-WAN service providers nearest gateway or cloud data center. And from there, those two data centers connect over the public internet to talk to each other.

So, in a way, that sounds a little bit better because each site is not connecting directly to one another, but the problem still remains that each site is connecting to a fairly close in proximity data center. So, China’s probably connecting to something close by China, LA is connecting to something close by Los Angeles, and then those two data centers are connecting over the public internet. So, again, were still having the same problem.

What I’d Recommend

So, the SD-WAN solution that I’d recommend for this type of scenario would be what I would call a cloud enabled SD-WAN solution, where the data centers are connected by a private IP backbone network. So, in this scenario, each site would get an SD-WAN appliance, or you could actually VPN directly to the SD-WAN provider’s nearest cloud gateway, and those cloud gateways are connected over a private backbone.

So, by doing this, you’re skipping the public internet for the majority of the problematic route. The problematic route is really going from Los Angeles to China or whatever that international route is. That’s where you’re getting all the packet loss. Well, you’re skipping that problematic portion of the route by jumping on a private IP backbone for that part of the transmission.

So, that’s going to be your best bet to reduce packet loss when you’re trying to communicate or send large files in between international sites. And with that, another thing you might want to look into is if that service provider does something called TCP proxy across their network. So, what that means is that as one site sends packets, if it realizes there’s packet loss, that site doesn’t resend the packet from the originating site, it resends the packet from the closest data center to its destination. So, you can see it’s going to really speed up the transmission if that SD-WAN service provider is using TCP proxy and their own private IP backbone.

Layer 2 or Layer 3?

Now, there’s another element to this too and this is a debate I’ll leave up to you to your network engineers, is that some SD-WAN service providers who offer their own private IP backbone network, offer a layer two network where some service providers are running a layer three network.

Now, like I said, you guys might know more about that than I do. I’m not a network engineer, but that’s also something that you may want to consider because that’s something that some providers may not bring up, but you may want to ask about.

Ask Mike for his recommendations

So, which service providers are these that offer these type of SD-WAN applications? Don’t Google it, just contact me via email or phone (714-593-0011). I’ll ask you a few questions, learn more about your company, and I’ll pair you up with the best SD-WAN service providers to fit your needs, probably a multiple. And I’ll get you on demos with them, get you quotes from them. That’s my job, I’m the broker for all these major ISPs and SD-WAN service providers and VoIP service providers. This is what I do all day.

So, don’t waste your time Googling it, just contact me. There’s no charge for a broker service. The service providers pair a fee. So, there’s absolutely no excuse to waste your time and try to search all this stuff on your own, you’ll never find the right information. Just reach out, contact me, I’m happy to help. If you like this video, please make sure to hit the like button and I will catch you on the next one.

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