SD-WAN vs MPLS, how to choose?

At present, the industry has a relatively mature understanding of SD-WAN. Currently, enterprises are concerned about the performance of SD-WAN, the advantages and disadvantages of SD-WAN solutions from different vendors, and which one is better between SD-WAN and MPLS.

Scenario 1: For fewer real-time applications in enterprise wide area networks, SD-WAN is better than MPLS

If enterprises have many key tasks running on the WAN, these key tasks require high real-time, and MPLS can better meet the needs of enterprises than SD-WAN, at least in terms of handling more real-time business traffic. The advantage of MPLS is even bigger. Although SD-WAN can bring a lot of advantages, but can not change it through the public Internet for data transmission and processing. Businesses can not guarantee data loss, latency, and jitter as business data are transmitted over the public Internet, all of which are killers for real-time applications. Of course, this is not absolute. Enterprises can also enjoy the benefits of SD-WAN if their real-time applications are hosted in the cloud and enterprises use or plan to use cloud-compatible SD-WAN solutions. details as follows:

1.  Increase the bandwidth: One problem businesses have to face when using MPLS is the high cost of high-bandwidth MPLS, and the adoption of SD-WAN technology enables businesses to enjoy high-bandwidth services while reducing costs and offering relatively inexpensive Internet connections (Ie, service cable, optical fiber, 4G, etc.). By aggregating multiple Internet connections, businesses will enjoy high-bandwidth services at low cost.
2. Improved performance: If users have multiple ISP connections, SD-WAN will limit low-priority traffic and will always be able to choose the fastest route for traffic on the public Internet. MPLS does not have this feature, using MPLS only one way of network connection, the user’s service level (CoS) settings are static, no immediate adjustment.
3. Increased uptime: SD-WAN Businesses will enjoy seamless link redundancy across multiple WANs, multi-link types and service provider networks by enabling enterprise users to aggregate multiple ISP public Internet connections and WAN connections at a single endpoint. MPLS providers sometimes switch the faulty link to a secondary public Internet connection, but such operations are not usually switched in real time and often do not have a third alternative in the event of a public Internet outage.
4. Improve the performance of small, remote sites: Almost every enterprise has sites or branches that are not suitable for building MPLS leased lines because these endpoints or branch offices are not large enough to support MPLS leased lines or they can not provide MPLS services at all, in which case by IPsec Enterprises that operate on all traffic to VPNs cannot get satisfactory network services. On the contrary, SD-WAN can provide the same level of network service regardless of which service provider’s network the enterprise uses.
5. Get rid of ISP monitoring: Businesses that use MPLS must use the same MPLS service provider’s service at all sites, and SD-WAN has nothing to do with ISPs. Enterprises are not locked down by ISPs and ISPs can be added or removed from any site at any time.

There are so many advantages to SD-WAN, which is why organizations often retain their thin MPLS networks for their real-time applications and add SD-WAN services to their hybrid WANs.

Scenario 2: If an enterprise is already on the cloud service, SD-WAN is better than MPLS

As mentioned above, using an SD-WAN in the cloud can provide a competitive advantage if the business hosts a large number of applications (AWS, Office 365, and Salesforce) in the cloud. With cloud-enabled SD-WAN service providers, corporate SD-WAN appliances send traffic to the cloud gateway and then connect it to the cloud application, keeping the cloud session going. Even if the Internet connection is down, the user service can switch back to within a few milliseconds and the link assurance service will never go down. In addition, some cloud-enabled SD-WAN vendors can connect directly to key cloud service providers, meaning that once an organization’s traffic is delivered to the SD-WAN provider’s cloud gateway, businesses can connect directly to cloud service providers. The significance of this move is to further reduce latency and reduce packet loss and jitter.