WAN Requirements

What Do You Really Need?

Changing times call for changing WANs. Modern WAN network technologies enable you to optimize cost and performance. Examples include hybrid networks, SD-WAN, LTE and WAN-OP as a service. Technologies such as these enable you to supplement or often replace your MPLS networks with inexpensive internet access circuits, reduce bandwidth needs to dramatically increase performance, activate high-performance broadband connections in minutes, automatically route traffic to the best resource, and provide seamless fail-over in less than a second.

Ensure your WAN evolves with your business

You must take into account all of today’s applications–as well as those that will have demands in the future.

What applications will your users want?

What performance levels will they require?

Which applications take priority in case of a conflict?

Start with understanding traffic characteristics

Understanding traffic characteristics is the foundation for determining your WAN requirements. Test assumptions about priority data–and bandwidth needs using empirical data. Take note of peak period demand–as well as ongoing needs. To do the job correctly, you should use WAN performance measurement tools. Many are free such as Cacti, NTOP and MRTG.

Identify the best technology for your business needs

The real challenge is consistent performance. Internet performance has improved dramatically over the past decade. Today, it often rivals MPLS service performance. Identify the best technology solution, whether that is SD-WAN, MPLS, or a hybrid of both.

Pay only for what you need

Just a few years ago, the majority of enterprise traffic would run on an MPLS network, an IPSEC VPN or both. Today, with SaaS apps hosted in the cloud, it’s essential to consider MPLS and internet bandwidth together, not separately. A WAN transformation to all internet circuits may make sense, depending on your site locations and latency.

But, unless your bandwidth requirements are based on empirical data, you will likely be paying for more than you need, which every carrier salesperson prefers.

Get the job done, faster, and at a lower cost than doing it yourself.

With the right network design, you can get incredible uptime and security. The pros at SASE Experts can help you get the job done, faster and at a lower cost than doing the job yourself

As you can see, there are a variety of factors to consider when you develop your WAN requirements. The pros at SASE Experts can help you get the job done, faster and at a lower cost than doing the job yourself. Give us a call!