Ten reasons why traditional routers are abandoned (six, seven, eight)

Over the years, we've dutifully upgraded our routers because there weren't many options. Routers aren't just the foundation of a business network; they're the business network. We need them to connect our offices, stores, and warehouses.

However, we are slowly finding that routing is insufficient. It cannot account for application differences. All of this tells us that enterprises should move away from routers and move to SD-WAN.

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Gartner has also predicted that SD-WAN will replace routers, so today we will talk about the reasons why SD-WAN replaces traditional routers.

In the last article "Top 10 Reasons to Get Rid of Traditional Routers", we talked about two reasons: the world is becoming more cloud-based and enterprises cannot improve productivity through traditional routing architectures; secondly, traditional routing makes SaaS performance poor. Today we will look at other reasons.

Reason to switch away from traditional routers #8: Garbled VoIP calls and pixelated video

Do you often make a VoIP call only to experience garbled sound? Or a video conference with a pixelated image or even a frozen screen? The continued expansion of unified communications (UC) applications has put IT departments under increasing pressure to provide employees with an excellent user experience. But whenever the user experience is unsatisfactory, there will be a large number of IT help desk calls. With traditional router-centric WAN architecture, it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide consistent, high-quality real-time communications.

Why? Because traditional routers cannot overcome the problem of packet loss, which negatively affects the quality of voice and video communications and the user experience and productivity. Traditional router-based WAN architectures typically backhaul all traffic to the headquarters data center, increasing latency for video and voice.

As the deployment of SD-WAN solutions and the widespread use of broadband connections become more common, WANs designed around basic SD-WAN solutions often rely on MPLS circuits for voice and video sessions to maintain quality. But MPLS is expensive and not widely available in more distant branch locations, and it does not solve UC application availability issues in the event of an MPLS service outage.

Another type of SD-WAN solution (let’s call it advanced SD-WAN solution) includes multi-link bonding and path conditioning capabilities (not available in regular routers) to overcome packet loss, latency, and jitter that affect voice and video quality. Packet loss, latency, and latency variation (or jitter) can cause UC calls to degrade, manifesting as audio loss and video artifacts and pixelation. Advanced SD-WAN solutions are designed to maintain the quality and reliability of real-time UC applications, even when using consumer-grade Internet services.

Reason #7 for switching away from traditional routers: Excessive router support and maintenance costs

Traditional routers used at the branch edge were not designed to support cloud-first initiatives. The constant change in applications and network demands requires a flexible network that can adapt to business needs.

When operating network devices such as branch routers, the process can be cumbersome as each router requires an arcane CLI and then hours of manual programming. These steps involve architecting, installing, deploying, configuring, and managing the device. It may also involve maintenance, upgrading software images, and troubleshooting as issues such as specific applications being slow or users being unable to access applications may arise. According to industry analysts and Cisco, an estimated 80% of IT resources are spent maintaining the network and 43% of IT time is spent on troubleshooting. These high percentages stem from the fact that traditional routers are designed to be managed individually and only provide limited visibility into network traffic.

In most cases, enterprises will sign a service contract with a vendor to help maintain and troubleshoot the network, as the IT organization may not be able to support it on its own. This prohibitively expensive service can be solved with the right SD-WAN solution.

How do SD-WAN solutions help organizations reduce costs?

The unified WAN edge platform provides SD-WAN, firewall, segmentation, routing, WAN optimization and analytics capabilities and is based on a business-first model to replace routers, saving 50% on hardware and software licenses and services.

Real-time application and network visibility enables IT departments to reduce troubleshooting time from days to hours, significantly reducing downtime and providing users with the highest quality experience.

Centralized orchestration enables IT to apply business intent policies, which can be translated into network policies, accelerating deployment and minimizing errors. IT departments can save up to 30% in initial installation, configuration and deployment costs. In addition, enterprises can save 80% in operating and management costs.

The market has proven that business-first SD-WAN delivers IT agility, resulting in significant improvements in operational efficiency.

Reason #6 for moving away from traditional routers: It takes too long to get a new website online!

For most businesses, performance growth is the key. Business growth can be achieved through business expansion or through mergers and acquisitions of other companies.

In both cases, deploying a business-driven SD-WAN can accelerate enterprise growth. The key is to get new sites and employees online as quickly as possible to generate incremental revenue. In both cases, that means connecting users to other organizations on the WAN as well as cloud applications.

Why launching a new website takes so long

The existing WAN model based on private MPLS connections and traditional branch routers presents several obstacles to accelerating time to market for new sites.

There are two main ones:

• Ordering and provisioning of new MPLS circuits
• Install and configure traditional routers at new branch offices

While the time it takes to provision an MPLS circuit varies by service provider and geography, it typically takes 60 to 120 days from the time the order is placed. In contrast, broadband Internet connections can be obtained in just a few days in most parts of the world. If network coverage is required for an entire area, 4G/LTE services can often be deployed more quickly, enabling enterprises to bring new sites online in days rather than weeks or months.

Original link:

http://blog.silver-peak.com/think-outside-the-router-reason-7-exorbitant-router-support-and-maintenance-costs