Aryaka, a global SD-WAN provider, says that while internet connectivity is a quick low-cost option to access SD-WAN applications, the medium’s unpredictable nature can inhibit response time.
In its "State of SD-WAN Connectivity" report, Aryaka found that since the public internet is fraught with unpredictable latencies, jitter and packet loss, performance can become significantly degraded, particularly over long distances.
The company found that latency, packet loss and jitter are inherent to the internet, and these issues are aggravated with distance. As a public medium, enterprise traffic competes with noncorporate traffic, and it does not lend itself to differentiation or prioritization mechanisms.
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When using an internet connection for SD-WAN, Aryaka found that on a link between Dubai and Dallas, the response time fluctuated between 750 milliseconds and 2 seconds, for example. Aryaka said that 750 ms by itself is not an unusually high application response time, but the variation further degrades the user experience, since the user cannot predict what kind of performance to expect.
Likewise, Aryaka reported that on a link between Dubai and Mumbai, the application response time varied between 127 milliseconds and 4 seconds.
“Internet is a popular solution today and it’s quick to bring up, but it’s also a public medium and is ridden with unpredictable jitter and packet loss,” said Shilpa Swamy, product marketing manager for Aryaka, in an interview with FierceTelecom. “Also, the internet traffic is shared with noncorporate traffic like Netflix and You Tube, making it hard to have traffic prioritization unless you’re controlling the end-to-end link.”
On the same route between Dubai and Dallas, Aryaka claims that its global SD-WAN reduces the variation in application response time on an average by a factor of 4. The provider said the values for the variation in response time for the Dubai-Dallas and Dubai-Mumbai links over the Aryaka global private network are 12.5% and 15.47%, respectively.
What can enterprises do to overcome these issues?
One option is to use an MPLS-based connection for SD-WAN. While using an MPLS-based private network is one option that provides better security and connectivity, these networks were not optimally designed to accommodate cloud connectivity.
“MPLS does not have direct cloud connectivity,” Swamy said. “There is some cloud connectivity to AWS and Microsoft Azure, but that’s a really small portion and it’s very expensive.”
Besides the challenges of getting cloud connectivity, there’s a long lead time to get MPLS connections up and running.
“Depending on the location, it can take up to 90-120 days to deploy MPLS connectivity,” Swamy said.
Instead, Aryaka said that by using a global private network, it can provide 4.1x faster application response time versus the public internet. Gaining an improvement in application performance can increase productivity and revenue for global enterprises.
Global private networks provide 2.5x lower variation in response times compared to the internet. Stable and reliable connectivity to data and applications improves application performance and end user experience.