Software Defined Wide Area Network

Comstor Partner Academy EMEA

Software Defined WAN

SD-WAN is more than just connecting networks. SD-WAN provides insight and control over the applications that are running between DCs, remote & central sites. Elevate control by extending LAN segmentation over the WAN, deep packet inspection and service chaining.

You can decide to choose Meraki or Cisco SD-WAN.

Cisco SD-WAN

Cisco vEdge & ISR with SD-WAN in the SD-WAN solution for advanced and large deployments. Besides application control you preserve segmentation and additional security checks over the WAN

Cisco ISR adds zone-based firewalling and IPS to your network and can integrate with Umbrella. Most of the ISRs have the option to route collaboration traffic with the UC license.

ISR 1000

100 Mbps

ISR 4221

50 Mbps

ISR 4321

100 Mbps

ISR 4331

100 Mbps

ISR 4351

100 Mbps

ISR 4431

1 Gbps

ISR 4451

1 Gbps

ISR 4461

-

vEdge 100

100 Mbps

vEdge 1000

1 Gbps

vEdge 2000

10 Gbps

vEdge 5000

10 Gbps

Meraki SD-WAN

Meraki MX provides SD-Wan for basic WAN deployments. You have full application control through tunnels connecting sites.

Meraki MX adds the option of being the UTM firewall in your network.


MX 84

250 Mbps

MX 100

500 Mbps

MX 250

1 Gbps

MX 450

2 Gbps

MX 64

100 Mbps

MX 65

100 Mbps

Flexible Mesh Structures: Meraki allows you to build a full mesh between your office networks to support data, voice and video. And Hub-and-spoke (direct) links between your HQ and a customer site for remote management or to a back-up DC for server back-ups. These are just some examples but obviously much more can be achieved. The message is that you have control over how networks are connected to another.

WAN redundancy: Meraki MX devices support dual WAN link to provide WAN redundancy. At first the Dual WAN link can act as a fallback to all traffic going between the sites. And secondly we can split-up redundancy based on application flows. Consider this example, use the cheaper WAN connection for voice traffic only when delay, jitter and latency are acceptable and fail over to the expensive WAN link when conditions fail.

Application Optimization: it is a start to select an optimized path for each application but from the moment several applications share a same WAN link it is up to you to prioritize and shape traffic flow to meet your QoS expectations.

A powerful dashboard: have the control over the traffic between the sites in 1 intuitive dashboard. No need to install any servers on-prem all control and reporting is done in the cloud. Easily extend the control end-to-end in your networks by adding switches, access points and more in the same portal.

LiveNX: Your Unified Platform for Cisco SD-WAN / Meraki / and more

Day 0 - PLAN: While network migration is not a blank-slate exercise, it does afford an organization the opportunity to perform an audit of assets, sites, resources and policies with a view to tailoring the new network to their business needs.

Day 1 - Build: During the production build out, the proof of concept is rolled out to active users. Once connectivity is established, based on requirements identified from the Day 0 baseline analysis, you will configure access control lists (ACLs) and quality of service (QoS) policies to mark traffic and deploy the configurations across the devices in the network.

Day 2 - Run: Once the production network is live, the ongoing day-to-day operations needs to focus on continual improvements and best practices. LiveNX delivers the data metrics, dashboards and reports of the application and network performance to optimize the end-to-end environment .

The Pulse

Cisco’s acquisition of Viptela has shifted the focus of delivering cloud-first software-defined networking solutions to their customers. With the vision to deliver intent-based networking – that is, network solutions that conform to what’s important to the business – Cisco SD-WAN (formerly Viptela) accelerates the delivery of that vision to the enterprise.

The Network Lifecycle: Every Step Counts

A solution that supports these essential capabilities can enhance every step of the network lifecycle, prevent productivity- and schedule-killing missteps, and accelerate detection, troubleshooting, and resolution when problems do arise.

Training section

Refer to our VoD page for more training videos around CATALYST 9000. VoD Page