A WAN composed of MPLS and one or more broadband links – a hybrid WAN – is becoming more commonplace in today’s businesses. Usually the MPLS circuit, with its inherent reliability and QoS, carries WAN traffic and the public broadband link is used for Cloud plus Internet traffic and as a backup to MPLS. This configuration often has downsides, for example there is an inefficient use of bandwidth and sometimes session drop on failover.
By adding Talari to a hybrid WAN architecture there are several benefits, firstly all bandwidth will be active with your policies enforced, failed or low quality network links don’t effect application performance or availability and all the time you’ll have complete visibility into WAN links performance and quality.
All circuits are active so at all times WAN locations have access to the full aggregated amount of bandwidth. Policies can be put in place to have real-time quality sensitive applications such as VoIP get highest priority and be transmitted over the network links with the lowest packet loss and latency – whether the link is MPLS or broadband – so the applications run over the best possible network with the highest quality. Simultaneously applications that are less latency sensitive such as intranet traffic and bulk file transfers can use the aggregated link capacity of all available circuits, again, including both the MPLS link and the broadband links, delivering the maximum possible capacity for hybrid WANs.
Traditional network configurations that use MPLS as the primary circuit and broadband as a standby backup, find it necessary to overly invest in stock of expensive MPLS bandwidth to accommodate traffic spikes. With the Talari hybrid WAN solution, all traffic has access to the combined capacity of all available links, including broadband, so expensive MPLS purchases can be avoided, taking advantage of the high capacity and less expensive broadband.
The service provider of MPLS network usually comes with some guarantees around levels of priority and availability however, no SLA can prevent occasional outages or quality issues that affects applications. With Talari’s Hybrid WAN solution, every path is constantly measured and assessed for packet loss, latency, jitter, and availability which means if an occasional quality issue occurs, critical traffic can be shifted to the better quality link, preventing the issue from having any negative impact on applications or the end-users of the apps.
If all links are being utilised and a link fails there is less available bandwidth than before and if the remaining links become congested, Talari will enforce company priorities to ensure that critical application traffic isn’t pushed off by lower priority traffic. With hybrid WAN architecture, congestion at the far end is detected and communicated so that traffic is held at the source when possible, reducing overall stress on the network.
Talari provides 128- or 256-bit AES encryption and other security features to prevent packets on a public Internet circuit from being read or modified. Intranet traffic sent across a broadband connection is secure, without the necessity for a separate VPN.
By adding the optional Talari Aware management system to the Talari solution, performance and quality measurements from across the network are aggregated in a central database. Featuring an analytics capability that provides current and historical information pertaining to the quality of every link at every location in the network and provides standard and customised reports, that assists IT staff to determine whether they’re receiving the bandwidth and quality promised from their service providers.
Hybrid WANs reduce network spend immediately and also in the future. Broadband links such as DSL, cable, and Metro Ethernet cost much less than proprietary MPLS yet provide dramatically larger bandwidth, so they can be used to inexpensively add significant bandwidth to a company’s network, eliminating the need to add additional MPLS capacity. Additionally this will help depress future spend in hybrid WAN architectures as bandwidth demand continues to grow, allowing the business to do more for less.
Availability and performance
Security and quality of service
Unmatched flexibility and simplified manageability
