May 3, 2023 • 60 mins
In this episode, we take a deep dive into SD-WAN technology, specifically what it is, where it came from, and where it's going.
Like us? Give us a review on Podchaser or Apple Podcasts to let us know!
Follow Breaking Down the Bytes!
Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook | Discord
Want to give feedback? Fill out our survey
Email us! - breakingbytespod@gmail.com
Follow Pat and Kyle!
Twitter:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pat (00:00):
everybody, welcome back to this week's edition of Breaking
Down the Bites.
As usual, I'm your host Pat.
You can find me on Twitter atlayer eight packet.
That is the number eight.
You can find Kyle on Twitter atDan 2 56.
You can find the show on TwitterBreaking Bites pod.
Alex, you're not on social, soif anybody wants to get a Alex,
(00:21):
just hit the shows Twitter andwe will certainly get it to him.
So we are pretty active onTwitter, so come say hello.
The more friends, the better thetime is.
So, also if you like the show,don't forget to subscribe on
your streaming platform ofchoice.
As usual.
We always like those numbers andpeople coming to say hi.
So, Pick it out, subscribe,like, share all that kind of
(00:45):
good stuff.
And more ears and eyes on us.
It's always good.
So the three amigos are backagain.
We had a rough few weeksschedules.
Alex, you're on vacation,enjoying Disney World down there
in sunny Florida.
And so Kyle and I had to fendfor ourselves and do the show
you know, do the show as a duorather than a trio.
(01:06):
But that's okay.
All back and rocking androlling, right?
So, back from vacation.
Mr.
Alex.
What's up man?
How
Alex (01:13):
Oh, doing pretty well, obviously back from extended
vacation to the cruise too.
So it was Disney World followedby a cruise, so it was 11 days
and I'm back.
I'm ready.
Pat (01:26):
man?
Some people got all the luck,let me tell you, man.
Oh man.
Kyle, what's up man?
What are you doing?
What are you up to?
Any Eddie Cruises for you?
Kyle (01:35):
No.
I mean, if it keeps raining likethis though, maybe I could.
Float down the road in like alittle dinghy or something.
Pat (01:41):
We'll just build ourselves a boat and get rolling.
Yeah.
It was raining the last likethree days.
There's been nothing but rain
Kyle (01:49):
Mm-hmm.
Pat (01:50):
in the front yard and everything.
It's brutal out there.
Kyle (01:53):
And that's that's your weekly weather report from Kyle,
so
Pat (01:56):
That's right.
That's right.
I expect it every week now.
What's the weather like?
Alex (02:02):
It's beautiful where I'm at.
Pat (02:03):
That's
Alex (02:04):
you're wondering,
Pat (02:05):
that's as expected.
Kyle (02:07):
you're right.
Pat (02:07):
expected.
No.
All good.
All good.
So everybody's back this week.
A few tidbit or notes Alex.
Well first of all, what was yourfavorite ride at Disney?
I have to know.
Alex (02:19):
well, I went to Animal Kingdom and Epcot and there was
two that stood above the rest, Imean, pretty easy, pretty far
ahead of third place probably.
And that was Pandora's flight atAnimal Kingdom and Cosmic Rewind
at Epcot.
Both of those are worth the waitand worth the trip to the parks
just for those rides,
Pat (02:39):
Damn.
Look at that.
That's awesome.
I have done Pandora's flight,which was awesome.
And then so when I was there in17 on the honeymoon, they did
not have the the one in Epcotyet, so I'm sure it was being
built or at least planned upon.
So I'm, so we're going inDecember, so I'm curious to see
(03:01):
what that that looks like inDecember again, so, we'll see.
But like when we were there thefirst time, like toy story land,
none of that was there.
It was all being built.
So I'm interested to see what'sup there.
So, oh, did you do test track atEpcot?
Alex (03:13):
Oh yeah, test.
Yeah, I did test track.
Yep.
Yeah, that was fun.
That was cute.
Cuz my kids were there.
So, you know, obviously it's acompetition then, so you can
build the best car and yeah, myoldest ended up having the best.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that was a good time andRTU was really good.
I mean, that might even be onethat I should have mentioned
(03:33):
too.
I really enjoyed rtu.
It might be because I love themovie.
It's probably, I'm not evenashamed to say it's probably my
top five favorite movies.
Pat (03:41):
All right.
Alex (03:41):
And I really did enjoy the ride ba.
Pat (03:45):
Well, awesome.
That's a good deal.
So everybody's got a little lowdown on Alex's Disney trip, so
it's all good.
All good.
One thing I will mention I don'tknow, Alex, you wanna mention
this too, but this my, for myfirst time at Cisco live, so I'm
excited.
We got the sessions allscheduled, the hotel's good.
The the flight's all scheduled.
(04:06):
So first time out there inVegas.
So I'm ready to rock and roll.
So, Alex, are you going?
Did you say you were going
Alex (04:13):
Yeah, I think the last time we talked about it, I may
have been 50 50, but yeah, I'mbooked, I'm registered, I'll be
out there, so we'll be able tocatch up in a
Pat (04:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm in.
I always
Alex (04:26):
and Nate's gonna be there.
Pat (04:28):
What's that?
Alex (04:29):
Nate
Pat (04:30):
Oh yeah.
Alex (04:31):
be there
Pat (04:32):
it's awesome.
Yeah.
Looking forward to
Alex (04:34):
and I are actually staying in the same hotel.
Pat (04:37):
Where are you staying?
Alex (04:38):
staying at Tropicana?
Pat (04:40):
I'm at the Luxer.
Alex (04:41):
know where.
Yeah, that's kind of like the,don't wanna call it the budget
one, but it's like if your partthat's the cheapest hotel that's
Cisco Live has some type of,Affiliation with so you can get
some discount.
Yeah.
So yeah, if I didn't make he,but he managed to find a place
(05:01):
at Tropicana a while back,probably through some crazy
credit card deal thing that helikes spending half his day
trying to
Pat (05:11):
Yeah.
Alex (05:11):
But yeah, so I got in for like 75 bucks a night.
And that's after taxes andstuff?
Kyle (05:16):
Wow.
Pat (05:16):
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
That's killer.
Alex (05:19):
Yeah.
Pat (05:20):
Yeah, so I'm going I know a bunch of the Cisco champs, the
program that we're a part of,there's a bunch of people going
there, so it'd be nice to putnames with faces and, you know,
they'll be friends for a coupleof days in real life instead of
just cyber life.
So that's always kind of cool.
So always a
Alex (05:37):
Yeah.
And then we get to play thevendor dinner game because this
is the first time that I've gonewhere work hasn't been paying
for my travel.
Pat (05:46):
Okay.
Alex (05:46):
So, They're paying for me to get into the conference,
well, using the learning creditsthat Disney has, but since
they're still technically atravel freeze, the anything
related to travel is on my time.
So the 300 bucks on the hotel Ispent I'm only a few hour drive
away, so it's like a$70 flightif I wanted to do a flight,
(06:08):
which I probably will, but yeah.
But food, this will be the firsttime I've gone to Cisco live and
since the company's not payingfor my food, I'm gonna have to
try real hard to get vendors topay for it.
So that's my
Pat (06:20):
Heck yeah.
Alex (06:20):
4, 4, 4 dinners paid for.
I got one so far.
My Cisco rep guaranteed me a
Pat (06:26):
Nice.
Alex (06:27):
so I gotta get three more and then the C C I E dinner.
But I don't know if I'll go toit, but that's usually a decent
meal, but I can only bring oneperson.
So if I'm there with you andNate, then I kind of feel like
a, an ass
Pat (06:38):
Well, now that we're part of the champs, that there's a
bunch of c Cs in the Champsprogram.
So if they're there, then theycan be my date for the night.
That's cool.
I, there's no shame in my game.
So any of my fellow champs thatare C C I e, that plan on going
to the the dinner you I'm yourplus one.
I have your dibs.
I'm making it public.
Nah, it's gonna be cool.
(06:59):
So we're looking forward tothat.
And I think there is a, there'sa champs thing, I think I wanna
say like Monday night.
It's either Monday night orTuesday night.
They do like a thing with theactual champs.
So like we have our owndedicated space and stuff.
So I'm curious to check that outand kind of hang and see what
all that brings to the table.
So that's kind of cool.
I'm looking forward to it.
Alex (07:17):
it's gonna be exciting.
And if you're not alreadyfamiliar with that, there's
always some big event.
You know, once a week, wherevereveryone that goes to Cisco
Alive can go to, they, theyactually rented out Allegiant
Stadium, a Raider Stadium.
And I'm not big Gwen Stefani'splaying.
Pat (07:33):
Okay.
Alex (07:34):
So if you're into Gwen Savani,
Pat (07:37):
See, I was into her
Alex (07:38):
at Legian Stadium.
And we're there.
Pat (07:39):
I'll tell you that much right now.
That was like my first crush.
I was like, oh man, she'sawesome.
Heck yeah.
Actually have a no doubt on, onvinyl.
So I love I
Alex (07:49):
Well, there you
Pat (07:49):
from Gwen
Alex (07:50):
Well, maybe, so I guess you're gonna head to over and
watch that
Pat (07:54):
See where the wind takes me.
I feel like it's a big task.
Being your first time in CiscoLive, there's just so much going
on.
You're just like, I don't knowwhat to do next.
So I'm sure I'll have a littlebit of that as well.
Alex (08:06):
Yeah, there's the thing that I wanted to do but didn't
get to do it to its full extent,last time I was at Cisco Live
was they started doing escaperooms.
But these escape rooms are itfocused.
So you, so to get outta it, youhave to do things like like
maybe log into an unencrypted SS I D and like mess around with
that and find some stuff to getout of an escape room.
Pat (08:30):
Oh man.
I hope they don't make me like,like code like Java file or JS O
or write a Python script fromscratch.
Cuz I'll be there until like thefollowing week they'll be like,
oh, nope.
Can't go anywhere.
Alex (08:43):
well, you'll just have to take a breakout session on
programming before you do thator
Pat (08:47):
Yeah, I got a bunch
Alex (08:48):
Alright.
There's so much fun.
Yep.
For sure.
Lots of fun.
And then I always like playingthere's like trivia games that
you can win prizes and I've wonsome pretty neat prizes over the
years.
Like a, an Amazon Echo.
Before they were really cheap.
Pat (09:02):
Yeah.
Alex (09:03):
and one of those s n e s emulators that were really hard
to find one year that was likeeveryone's go-to Christmas
present or something.
I won one of those one year.
Pat (09:13):
Yep, for sure.
Yeah, it's interesting.
So if anybody's had Cisco Live,hit us up.
We'll be there.
It's gonna be cool.
So I'm looking forward to that.
So, Kyle, maybe next year youcan come with us, man.
Just be like, yo, cuts down.
Put me on a plane, let's go.
Oh, it's awesome.
So anyway get a little of thatout of the way.
The the topic this week, I feellike the deep dives that we've
(09:35):
done have done pretty well forus.
So pe people have really foundsome value out of it.
So I figured the deep dive thisweek, and it'll kind of be,
it'll in, it'll be in mywheelhouse, if you will, since
I've dealt a lot with it overthe last couple of years.
But I think we would do a deepdive on SDWAN.
I feel like that's a big one.
It's a major player in today'sspace.
(09:56):
It, you know, maybe a coupleyears ago it wasn't really.
Mainstay yet or, you know,center stage.
But I think now people aremoving away from the legacy WAN
types and SD WAN is very verymuch so in the conversation.
So I figure we would take thisepisode and do an SD wan deep
dive.
So I guess I'll kind of get thisstarted off.
(10:16):
And you know, like I said, thelast couple of places I've been
have run a flavor of SD wan andthey're all three different
flavors, if you will.
So I've gotten a wide breadth ofSD wan experience over the last
couple years.
And both from a, you know,maintenance perspective of,
okay, it's already here, just,you know, kind of scale it and
(10:38):
maintain it and from a, youknow, grassroots, completely
greenfield, deploy it and thenmanage it, you know,
perspective.
So, yeah, I figured that thiswould be the good one to do that
with.
So, So, yeah, I guess, I kind ofgive a little depth in depth of
kind of how we got here andwhat, and I think the sdwan
stuff will make a little moresense, but just kind of talking
(11:02):
general scopes like back I don'tknow.
I took my CCNA in 2013.
I started in 2010 and thenpassed it in 13.
And when I passed it in 13,there was still frame relay
questions on my CC n a, whichyou talk about frame relay now
people look at you like you havesix heads, look what the hell's
frame relay.
So, so, so some legacy wanthings, right?
(11:25):
So you have frame relay at leastfrom my perspective when I
started kind of learn about thisstuff, frame relay was the wan
back then.
And Delsey's and all that kindof stuff that made frame relay
work underneath the hood.
And then, so, That from FrameRelay, then PLS came into the
picture and it was yeah, thatwas the darling of the industry
(11:46):
for quite a while.
And, you know, so that was, youknow, end to end QS and, you
know, private connectivity andall that kind of stuff.
Pls, cloud, whatever you wannacall it.
So a lot of voice systems ranover pls cuz it was dedicated Q
os and the flexibility thatcame, that sort of thing.
But then m you know, thedrawback to M pls was cost,
(12:09):
right?
It was really expensive.
Right?
And depending on how manyoffices you had or how many
sites you had and to drop an mpll s circuit in there, in some
instances I've been in placesthat have two MPLS and primary
and a secondary to drop both ofthem in there were quite
expensive.
So, And a couple years ago Istarted with SD WAN around, I
wanna say 2018, 2019, somewherein there.
(12:32):
And so they were moving awayfrom the more expensive circuits
of npl l s frame relay, youknow, for those that still had
it out there, things of thatnature.
And go into broadband, right?
Or, you know, just changing overto just business broadband,
right?
But the question was how do youget the M P L S performance or
the benefits of NPL s out of abroadband you know, business
(12:56):
class circuit, right?
So I think that's where SD WANcomes in and sort of blends the
two together.
And so the idea of SD wan it hasmultiple.
I should say ideas wrappedaround it.
Right.
But it's the idea is tobasically from an SDWAN
perspective, get a get, youknow, I should say from a WAN
(13:19):
perspective, I.
Basically use just whatevertransports you want to use,
right?
Whether that's, if you wannastick with mpls, great.
If you wanna, if you want to geta broadband circuit, a business
class, i s p in there, great.
If you wanna do cellular orgreat, you know, that kind of
thing.
SD WAN can terminate all ofthose connections and then
(13:40):
basically be intelligent enoughto to make its decisions on
which.
Which circuit or with which leg,which transport to actually use
based off of its ownintelligence of, okay, packet
loss jitter latency, things ofthat nature.
It's constantly measuring forthose three types, or I should
(14:00):
say those three things, it'smeasuring those on each one of
the legs, and then based off ofthose measurements it
intelligently chooses whichconnection to use.
So you have that automaticfailover, you have that
intelligence to it.
You have, you know, you canprefer, you know, in the
settings or, you know, howeveryou design it.
(14:20):
You can prefer, you know, oneleg over the other two, or
however many you have.
Say you have three legs, right?
You can load balance across allthree.
You can prefer one over theother two.
You can do two over the otherone, you know, that sort of
thing.
So there's quite a bit offlexibility and it scales very
well as, as well.
So from the underbelly of that,The SD WAN takes the, you know,
(14:44):
the intelligence out of it,right?
So, and Alex and Kyle, you guyshave been around long enough
that, you know, if you had 50sites, you had 50 routers, and
you were managing all 50 at eachplace, right?
So, you know, you had the s SSHinto each, you know, router or
switch or whatever you're doing,and, you know, make those
changes.
And it was very time consumingand blah, blah, blah.
(15:04):
So what Sdwan does is withsoftware defined networking,
right?
It's a it's a central place tomanage all.
So however many sites you have.
And then basically that configis then pushed down to each of
the actual boxes on site.
So you're taking the, you'retaking the intelligence off the
actual box, or I should say thecontrol plane, really off the
(15:27):
actual box and bringing it to acentral, centralized location.
And so that way, you know, youcan have 50 sites today and you
can have a hundred sitestomorrow.
And basically you're justdeploying the box at each site
and the configuration getspushed down and off you go.
Right?
So that it's very scalable inthat fashion.
(15:48):
So.
But it's very centrally managed.
Again, you know, the brain livesat a central location, and then
everybody sort of, you know, allthe, I should say spokes, right?
Maybe it's a little better tosay a hub and spoke.
With that terminology everybodycalls home, right?
Each spoke calls home or youknow, every now and then it
checks in to make sure it'sstill there.
(16:08):
And then if something needs tobe pushed down, if the
configuration needs to be pusheddown, then it comes from the
brain and goes downhill, right?
Goes southbound, if you will, intoday's technology.
So those are some of the thingsthat, you know, I've seen with
SD WAN that make, you know,larger enterprises life's a
little easier with scale, withyou know, configurations all
being the same, working fromtemplates, right?
(16:30):
So each one of those, or you canmake as many templates as you
want, but the idea is totemplatize your configurations,
right?
Not just you know, Not just have50 sites and 48 of them are all
different, right?
So the idea is then to push youknow, templatize it, you get
your standard config across theboard.
That way it's much easier tomanage, et cetera, et cetera,
you know, et cetera.
(16:50):
So I said a lot there.
Did you guys have any sort ofquestions as we kind of jump in
here with either what it, whatits purpose is, what it's trying
to do, and kind of where it's,you know, where it's at the
current state of today'snetworks?
Alex (17:08):
I think you, I guess you really kind of focused on two
different things just now whenyou're trying to explain SD
WANs.
So, and like you said, it wasquite a few minutes there of
explaining it.
So if you were trying to defineSD WAN and weren't trying to use
like the dictionary definitionof it, what.
What's the simplest way youcould explain SD wan?
(17:31):
So would you say, based on whatyou just said, that SD WAN is
allowing you to use severaldifferent types of
connectivities or such as mpl, ls, internet cellular, combining
those and then kind of givingyou a centralized management to
(17:53):
intelligently do stuff with it?
Or
Pat (17:56):
that's probably
Alex (17:57):
describe
Pat (17:57):
That's probably the best way.
So I, you know, SD WAN basicallyuses software right?
To control, you know, the bigthree connectivity management
and the data, the services,right in between, you know,
whatever you have data senators,remote offices, cloud, you know,
the big three cloud, you know,that kind of thing.
So it bridges all of thosetogether from a WAN perspective,
(18:19):
right?
So, especially now with the, andI'll kind of touch on the cloud
thing, especially now with theexplosion of the cloud.
Like if you were on a, on an PLl s.
Network.
Right?
Or wan, how would you get an M PL S circuit in your cloud?
That doesn't exist.
That doesn't compute, right?
So I think Estee Wan does a nicejob of, you know, being able to
bridge all of that, you know,together.
(18:41):
And I think the old legacy wanstuff, right?
For folks that have been aroundfor a bit, the old way the wind
used to work is everything wasback hauled through a data
center, right?
So you had npl, l s, you know,connecting all your sites, but
the security stack right was ata data center and then basically
all the traffic had to come backto that data center, get
(19:03):
scrubbed through the securitystack, and then out the, out to
the internet from the datacenter and not locally or like a
local, you know, internetbreakout at wherever the site
may be.
So SD WAN combats that as well.
You can still do it that waywith SD wan I've seen it done
that way, but most of them, mostof the.
Modern designs they do a localinternet breakout right at the
(19:27):
site, and you're not backhauling traffic anymore.
So, but at the end of the day,kind of defining what it is,
we're trying to throw a couplewords around it.
It's basically you're usingsoftware to control
connectivity, management and thedata in between your, you know,
in between your w insights inbetween your data centers,
again, data centers, remoteoffices, cloud resources, right?
(19:48):
So, it basically, and the otherthing too it's the big one here,
it's, it decouples, like I said,it decouples the control plane
from the data plane.
You're taking the brains off ofthe local box at your actual
sites and bringing it to acentral place where then it is
centrally managed and then theconfiguration is pushed down to
(20:08):
the actual boxes.
So I hope that answers a littlebit of your question.
Alex (20:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, certainly I'm familiarwith SD wan.
I'm just trying to try to seehow you would describe it.
Cause I think SD WAN can bedefined a few different ways by
different vendors, but I think.
Looking for a definition that istrue amongst every vendor, and I
think that's probably the case,especially the two things that
(20:35):
you mentioned and focused on.
Pat (20:38):
Yep.
We kind of touched on it before,but I think one of the SD wan's
sort of key features, right, isthe ability to manage multiple
connection types, right?
Whether it be mpls, whether itbe broadband, whether it be like
cellular or wireless, things ofthat nature.
And then basically you cansegment traffic within.
Those within multiple segments,right?
(21:01):
You can chop that up and, youknow, basically send it along
the wan, right?
So, you know, you can think ofit as for those of you that are
familiar, think of it asmultiple vfs, right?
You can split that traffic.
However, you know, if you needto keep separate traffic within
your wan, you can do that withSD wan.
Send them within multiplesegments or vfs and, you know,
(21:23):
they use the same pipes, theyuse the same technologies, but
they don't know, you know, thothose two vfs don't know each
other exists, right?
That sort of thing.
So there's multiple ways to kindof, you know, skin that cat, if
you will.
So, I feel like that's a bigone.
I also think the big one thereis the, again, the traditional
WAN model is, you know, backhauling all that traffic.
(21:44):
So then at your data center youhave to have these, you know,
massive scales of, you know,firewalls and circuits and all
that kind of stuff to handle allof that traffic.
Now you don't, you know, with sD A, you don't have to, cuz all
the internet traffic is still,you know, with the security
stuff that the SD WAN boxes nowhave it the, it can be done
(22:05):
right there at the edge and, youknow, broken out and sent to the
internet right from the actualsite instead of back hauling,
you know, it all.
So I think that that definitelyhelps as well.
Alex (22:15):
I was just gonna mention cause I think another question
that may come up is like, how isSD WAN getting better or how's
it evolving?
And I think it's probably bestfor people to realize that, oh,
I think when SD WAN was firstreally catching on, it was
really, people just thought ofit as a way to connect back to
that data center, a simple wayto connect back to it.
They didn't wanna have to throwin a router that they had to
(22:37):
configure some complicated VPNtunnel that they didn't know
about it, how to do that.
And if you have 200 sites, thatcan get complicated.
So I think Estee Wan's firstpurpose was, Hey.
Remote office, get back to, youknow, get back to this my own
little internal cloud, I guessyou can say.
And now it's evolving too.
(22:58):
They can do quite a bit more,like you said now they have
security functions on them andjust now the, you know, several
different types of connectivityyou can plug into them and now
they're more intelligent andthey can pick, okay, this voice
traffic should go over thisconnection that you're running
because this says lower jitter.
(23:18):
And yeah, it's just, cuz like Isaid I think it's interesting to
know where it's going in thefuture and I think it's a good
idea for people to understandwhere it's gone through so far.
So just wanted to chime inthere.
Pat (23:33):
Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.
I think that it has come quite abit and I actually forgot that
when Alex, when you and I workedat Evolve, they sort of got
their own.
They put out their own versionof SD wan.
It really, it wasn't called thatat the time.
But I, you know, speaking ofNate we, we you know, he was
kind of working a lot with that.
It was like evolves a little, Idon't wanna say homegrown, I
(23:55):
guess you wanna call it, it'sprobably the best word for it,
but it was ba you know, I thinkthey called it what the bonder
or something.
It was some terminology but itwasn't SD a at the time, but it
basically served the same fun,the function, right.
So, you know, we had customersthat wanted to try it, and it
basically just put two, two rawISPs into this bonder, into a,
you know, a glorified Linux box.
(24:16):
Right.
And it, you know, it madeconnections with the head end,
which was, you know, evolve'sdata center at the time and
then, you know, left from there.
So Evolve was doing that, like,that was probably what, 2015,
Alex?
Something like that.
So that was a little evenbefore.
Some of the, you know, the EsteeWAN verbiage was out there and
it was a buzzword.
So, but yeah, so that was, youknow, a cool little taste of,
(24:37):
you know, how some of thatworked and whatnot.
And then, you know, in the lastcouple years, it's certainly,
you know, Estee Wan has explodedto everybody.
Everybody's got, it seems likeeverybody's got a flavor of
Estie Wan now know.
Alex (24:48):
Right.
Yep.
For sure.
Pat (24:51):
So I guess some of the, I don't wanna get too into the
details, but at a high level,right?
So, yeah, most of the, you know,we talked about okay, so you're
abstracting the brains from theactual boxes, right?
The intelligence of the routers,switches, whatever it is.
So where does that go?
Right?
So most of your SD WAN providersnow are cloud-based, like the
(25:11):
brain is in a cloud, right?
I mean, you can host ityourself.
I don't necessarily recommend itbut you know, you can do that.
But most of them, you know, likefor example, Ciscos they host it
in aws, right?
And, you know, VeloCloud right?
Does the same thing.
Basically it's all cloud hosted.
So, you know, Palo Alto, samedeal.
It's all cloud hosted.
(25:32):
I think they do have versions.
I think Cisco has a version ofthe Cisco Vitello is what they
call it.
You can do you can download likean ova, a VM machine to, to be
the Marines.
But is Cisco already hosted?
Why, like, why, what's the pointof that?
So, so yeah, most of'em aregonna be cloud hosted, and then
basically it's just all webbased, right?
You get in there through a gooeyand start pointing and clicking
(25:52):
and building, building yourstuff.
The main gist of it is you'rebasically taking I guess trying
to formulate this better.
So the you know, like I said ifyou have configurations that
you're doing, you're basicallythen pushing it down to the
actual devices via templates orwhatever.
(26:13):
And then also but that's, thatcommunication is actually done
over IP sec tunnels.
So it's all encrypted.
So you don't have any sort ofreal data hanging out there.
It's all in ip sec tunnels.
And then basically, if one sitewanted to talk to another site,
the head end or the brains isn'tinvolved at all.
They build automatic tunnels toeach other.
(26:35):
Right.
So again, so that takes thatback haul piece out of it, cuz
you don't necessarily need it.
It's intelligent enough to sortof know its own.
Wan or its own neighbors, andthen basically, Hey, I need to
get to here.
I'm gonna form automatic tunnelwith you and, you know, off you
go, sort of thing.
So, some other terminologyyou'll sort of hear on, on, on
(26:56):
as they're building or as the SDwan functions build their
tunnels you'll hear an overlayand an underlay.
So basically the underlay is theISPs, right?
The physical part of that.
Right.
And then the overlay is theactual tunnels that SD wan
builds on top of the underlay.
So they split it out into thatparticular, you know,
(27:17):
terminology.
So again, not to get too crazyinto the weeds, but some of the
g generic terms you'll hear whendealing with SD wan overlay and
underlay are a big onecontroller, obviously the brains
that, that's another big one.
So just trying to.
Piece, you know, some of thistogether.
So, but yeah everything from acommunication standpoint,
whether you're going to thecontroller or to another actual
(27:38):
S two RamBox it, it is all ipsec VPN tunnels.
So, that's also you know, a bigone there as well.
So, Kyle, any questions withthat or Alex any other
questions?
Alex (27:50):
Well, you mentioned underlay and overlay and that
was, those were terms I wantedto use earlier on, but I feel
like some people, if they're notin this space, struggle with
that concept cuz that is,especially for someone in
networking who understandsthat's the easiest way to
describe it really.
And you mentioned IP sec andagain, if people are in this
(28:11):
space, might see a lot ofsimilarities between like
classic DMV VPNs and how theseSD WANs function, at least
underneath
Pat (28:21):
Yep.
Alex (28:22):
So I feel like a lot of this stuff, the SD WANs do that
technology has been around forquite some time, but They've now
made it much more accessible forpeople that are simply in it.
I mean, you don't have to besome seasoned network engineer
to support it.
Now they've put a, you know, afancy gooey and centralized it
(28:42):
in one place, and now it's muchmore feasible for just about any
organization to run it.
Pat (28:47):
Yep.
Yep.
Alex (28:49):
But,
Pat (28:50):
and I think that's, that, that's a good point I think it,
it facilitates a lot of things.
Like you said the technology'sbeen around there, been around
the block for quite a bit.
SD WAN just kind of, I think,puts a pretty coat of paint on
it, and it makes it a littlemore, you know, a little more
usable from a scalable, youknow, perspective.
So, and I don't know, Alex, Iguess I'll get your your kind of
(29:12):
take on this and, you know,maybe Kyle too.
Do you think your company has tohave a certain number of sites
or a certain size to actuallytake to benefit from SD wan?
Alex (29:26):
Well, I'm not familiar with the SD WAN price models
yet, so I don't know if there'smuch cost to entry.
I would like to think,especially with SaaS models and
some really cheap boxes thatmaybe that it's, you could make
an argument to do it as soon asyou have two or three sites that
really need connectivity to eachother.
So I'm thinking, no, not really.
(29:47):
It's probably still simpler toget an SD WAN solution than set
up full mesh VPN n tunnelsbetween three
Pat (29:55):
Or DMV P editor.
Yeah.
Alex (29:57):
Certainly when you start talking about D VPNs and like
failover solutions with that.
Cuz then the failover solutionsis the other thing too.
Which really, if you're doing itclassically with VPNs it starts
getting really complicated.
Like you have two ISPs and youdon't own your own block and you
have two different public IPaddresses.
Now you're several differenttunnels and failure over
(30:19):
dynamically.
It starts, it just startsgetting much more complicated.
And then at that case, SD WAN isprobably a much simpler
solution.
And if there's not a obviousfinancial drawback to, you know,
like if, again, like the initialcost of just setting it up, if
(30:40):
that's not there, yeah.
I can't see a reason why youwouldn't consider it early on.
But again, I'm not familiar withit, the.
The companies that I've beenwith have either done it
themselves at Evolve IP, or havebeen PlayStation in Disney,
which you know, we're talkingabout scale.
That obviously becomes
Pat (30:58):
Right.
Alex (30:59):
simpler to handle with an S D N solution.
Pat (31:02):
Yeah, I was kind of thinking that myself, like, you
know, originally I thought,well, if you're kind of small,
like I don't really see thepoint of like two or three sites
doing SD wan.
But again, if the money.
Is not, if there's a low costentry.
Yeah.
I wouldn't see why you wouldn't.
But I'd be curious to see ifanybody has any thoughts on that
as like, is SD N meant for thelarger enterprise because of its
(31:25):
scale?
You know, scaling abilities,right?
I think that's probably one ofits biggest pros is the you
know, is the way to scale,right?
So, you know, you're notnecessarily, you know, there's
no, you know, buy-in somethingfrom a vendor, having it shipped
to an office, somebodyconfiguring it and then
(31:46):
reshipping it to wherever itneeds to go, and then having
somebody plug it in and blah,blah blah and all that.
You know, we've all been there.
Now with SD N you can basically,Ship it to wherever it's gonna
go.
Have somebody rack and stackplug it in, it calls home and it
knows where to go.
Right?
That, that zero touchprovisioning is also a large
(32:07):
pro.
Right.
For that for the SDWAN stuff,and again, you can scale in a
matter of, you know, you canspin these things up in a matter
of minutes if you had everythingready to go, you know, from a
template perspective before itactually got to where it's
going.
You know, had that templateready to go.
Serial number boom, it plugs in,you know how plug however many
legs you have in at theseoffices and off you go and it
(32:30):
calls home and, you know, in acouple of minutes you're, you
know, you got traffic flowing.
So it's this whole mind shiftfrom traditional legacy, you
know, networking that we've, youknow, we've all grown up on and
loved, but it's it's definitelya shift in mindset and, you
know, again, talking about theoverlays, the underlays and all
(32:50):
this terminology, right?
Northbound southbound APIs andhow it communicates with the
controllers and all kinds ofcrazy stuff.
It's some really it's a new dayhere in the networking world and
it just feels like, it's somecool stuff and I'm I don't think
it's done sort of growing upyet.
I think that's the land's gotsome growing to do yet.
But I definitely think it'sheading in the right direction.
Alex (33:12):
Agreed.
Pat (33:13):
So, Kyle, anything for you?
You're kind of out of the EsteeWan game, so,
Kyle (33:17):
Yeah.
A little bit.
So, I mean, I'm hearing a lot ofthings that sound really
interesting.
Pretty cool.
I haven't had a lot of hands on.
There any cons, pitfalls thatyou've kind of come across in
the Estie WAN realm versus youknow, I guess maybe the more
traditional legacy style.
Pat (33:36):
yeah.
At least for me, I think andsome are better at this than
others.
A and again, I think that goesback to Alex with the pricing
sort of nomenclature saying,okay, look like, you know, these
vendors that, that have stuffout there, like they're
expecting you to have X amountof sites, so it's cost.
Beneficial then you can justifythat cost.
So that's probably one I wouldsay, Hey, you know, it, you
(33:57):
know, depending on yourinfrastructure you know,
depending on where that pricebreakpoint is, it may or may not
be a good fit for some folks.
The other thing I found too isif you're pushing like
templates, I think they're goodand bad at the same time.
Like I think templates are greatfor things that are standard
across the board, right?
Your NTP servers, your DNSservers, S N M P things of that,
(34:22):
you know, banner messages,things of that nature.
Stuff that doesn't change orshouldn't change, I should say,
from site to site, no matterwhat site you're at, all that
stuff should be the same aacross the boards.
The other part of the templatesis if your environment isn't
quite right, or I should sayisn't quite.
At a space where it can betemplatized, you have to sort of
(34:45):
do like a one-off for like youcan't.
The templates aren't aren'tflexible enough if you have one
or two sites that are just alittle different than the other
ones.
Now the goal there is to getthose two or three sites,
whatever they are you know,those outliers into that
template, right?
Get them structured enough sothey can fit in a template and
(35:06):
everybody's cookie cutter,right?
But if you do have thatenvironment where those, that
wonder two sites is quitedifferent for whatever reason,
it just has enough to just to beannoying, you know, it needs to
do something that all the othersdon't.
You have to create a whole newtemplate for that and basically
do the whole thing over and thenchange your template to fit that
site.
(35:26):
And then that can kind of getinto where you get into like
template sprawl, right?
So you have like a bunch oftemplates and, but the whole
idea is to get your environment,get it towards a spot where
everyone can be fed from thesame.
Template.
I think that's probably a con,but that's more of a management
sort of, you know, con withthat.
I've worked with different SDWAN flavors that some are easier
(35:51):
to kind of set up.
Things like q o s things of thatnature.
Some are better to set up thatthan others.
So if you're not in a if you'rewith a vendor that doesn't make
that easy, that can kind ofbecome a, you know, a little bit
of a rabbit hole sort of thing.
So, it just depends on, youknow, various things.
But, I think the, under theunderlying SD WAN product itself
(36:16):
or what it's, you know what itdoes at a nuts and bolts, no
matter who slaps a vendor nameon it.
I think it's good.
It just depends on these vendorsthat they have their quirks
depending on, you know, how muchthey actually give you eyes
under the covers.
Right.
Because I've had places like andI don't know if this is still
the way or not, but like when Iwas doing the velo cloud Sdwan
(36:39):
stuff, they gave you very littlevisual or I should say a very
little peak under the covers asfar as like what happens in the
back end.
So you basically had control ofyour front end sdwan boxes.
It magically left that sdwan boxand showed up at the SDWAN box
in your data center.
You had no visibility in betweenthe actual SD WAN boxes.
(37:01):
Like you didn't have anyvisibility in the actual fabric
into the cloud, right into thatSD WAN cloud.
So that made it a little hardtrying to figure out, you know,
troubleshooting and things ofthat nature.
Now, on the other hand, theCisco stuff, the Vitello, they
give you full visibility fromunderneath the covers.
So that is fully customizablefrom front to back.
(37:23):
So the other part of that is,yeah, you get the visibility,
that's great, but if you're notlike well-versed enough in it,
it can be daunting to be like,okay, am I doing this right cuz
I'm seeing now all the under thecovers things right.
That sort of thing.
So it can be overwhelming tokind of learn that, you know,
all that piece, all the way fromA to Z.
Kyle (37:43):
Okay.
Alex (37:44):
Yeah, and I'll probably add.
That vendor interoperability isprobably quite a bit harder if
you're talking about an Sdwan nsolution.
Cause you know, you can createan IP sec tunnel between a
thousand different vendors.
But trying to get a vitel towork with silver Peak or 40 Net
(38:06):
or something like that,
Pat (38:07):
That's a good point.
Alex (38:09):
WAN solution is a whole different ballgame.
So, I haven't run into itenough, so I'm sure there's
solutions out there cuz I'm surethey've come across it.
Like, if you acquire a newcompany and they have a thousand
vitelli nodes and you're rockingand VMware Ello cloud, now
there's gotta be some way youcan integrate them.
That would be my thought isvendor interoperability might be
(38:31):
a bit more difficult andProbably a bit harder to move
off a vendor, but it seems likemost people tend to stick with
one vendor anyway, so that'sprobably not a major deal
breaker for a lot of people.
Pat (38:42):
Yeah, the only place I would think of where the vendor
interoperability comes with islike a merger or an acquisition.
Like you said, you know, ifyou're a, if you're a thousand,
thousand shop Vitello and youYeah, you buy a shop that has
48, like, you know, okay, whatdo you, yeah.
How do you blend those twotogether?
Right?
So I think that's probably the,where they see the most, you
know, hills, if you will, froma, from an interoperability, you
(39:05):
know, perspective.
But the other thing I was kindof talk thinking about too is,
you know, like there are somesecurity tools out there that
they have that the Sdwan boxesare sort of, you know, now
coming built in, if you will.
You know, but like, what are theother security tools that you
have to integrate with them?
Like I think there's someshortfalls around that as far as
(39:27):
trying to get it in the, youknow, operate that sdwan box
operating within your existingsecurity stack, right?
Or other sort of tools, right?
So whether that's a scene toolor, you know, like a Splunk or,
you know, things of that nature,like how does that all, you
know, integrate as well?
So there, there may be some, youknow, maybe some pitfalls there.
(39:48):
The visibility, right, that wetalked about before, I mentioned
a few minutes ago that that's abig one.
As well, especially for thesecurity side, right?
You really don't have a wholelot of that, you know,
visibility, you know, things ofthat nature.
So, but yeah.
Hey, who, yeah, who knows, maybethere's some they're developing
some stuff and you know, thatsort of gets gets better every
day.
So it's it's an interesting.
You know, take on, it justdepends on, you know, where we
(40:10):
see it going in the next coupleyears.
But I it's definitely here.
It's a, it's an everyday thing.
It's, you know, it's not just afringe, Hey, larger corporations
can't afford it cuz they'rethrowing money at it sort of
thing.
It's here for everybody, Ithink.
And then I think it's got somereally good some really good
pros to it.
Kyle, you got anything else?
Kyle (40:29):
That was that was what I had for
Pat (40:30):
Cool.
Cool.
So just some vendors I wannathrow out there for you know,
we, we've been talking aboutlike I said, VeloCloud Palo Alto
has a, has their own sdwan nowwhich Palo Altos are nice cuz
they don't require a separate SDWAN box.
It all works within their.
Next Generation firewall.
So if you have, if you'realready on Palo Firewalls, it's
just a, it's a plugin for theirfirewalls, which is kind of
(40:53):
nice.
Silver Peak is the I thinkSilver Peak was one of the first
ones to the game.
So they're always popular.
And then Cisco Vitello you know,it's always a good one.
So obviously Vitello was astandalone company and then
Cisco came and bought them a fewyears ago, so now they just,
they, you know, they basicallycalled Cisco Vitello, so it's
they slapped their name on itand off they go.
(41:14):
I'm trying to think of whatelse.
Like, some use cases,
Alex (41:17):
Val Cloud.
Yeah.
Pat (41:20):
that'd be about it.
Those are the big ones, atleast.
Alex (41:23):
Yeah.
And like you said, at this pointit's kinda like streaming
services.
You got a few guys that kind ofrun the show, but everyone's
doing it.
Pat (41:33):
Yep.
Yep.
So, just a couple of keytakeaways from the SD WAN stuff.
You know, that we kind of spewedout here in no, no particular
order.
But basically SD WAN is the, youknow, it's a WAN technology with
a virtualized, you know, again,here's that term overlay, right?
It's basically abstracting thesoftware, you know, from the
hardware, right?
(41:53):
So you're, again, taking thecentral, you're taking the brain
off the actual individual boxand putting it into a
centralized location, right?
Controller you know, that's thetechnical, you know, term for
it.
So, again network abstraction,right?
Land virtualization, policydriven, centralized management,
right?
You can do all kinds of crazypolicies with how you wanna do
(42:14):
traffic, right?
So, again, q o s is a big one.
You know, with VoIP, obviouslybeing around the last oh geez,
seems like a billion years yeah,you gotta make sure that traffic
is prioritized, things of thatnature.
You know, and it again, itscales, scales, scales very well
from a, you know, both from alocal perspective of, Hey, you
wanna get a third leg in there,or if you can get a third I s p,
(42:36):
great, you know, whatever.
Or from a site perspective,right?
You all of a sudden now youbought somebody and now they're,
you know, they're, they got 50sites across the states, you can
get'em on your wan tomorrow,right?
You know, in a relatively, youknow, short amount of time
versus, you know, the old schoolway of, you know, configuring 50
different routers and sending'emout and getting all that stuff
(42:57):
you know, scheduled and all thatkind of crazy stuff.
So, You know, there, there'svarious ways to architect it,
right?
So it can be cloud-based.
Most of them, most of thecontrollers, like I said, are
cloud-based.
Or you can do it on-prem you cantechnically do a cloud and an
on-prem if you wanted to.
But the way I've seen it done isamazing.
Basically, the controller part,the brains part is all in the
(43:18):
cloud.
And those those boxes just pointthere to a p from a public IP
perspective.
So, you know, you're reducingCapEx, right?
So, you know, hardware, thingsof that nature.
There's no need of, there'sreally no need for specialized
equipment, you know, anymore,that sort of thing.
So, you know, it can terminateall kinds of different.
Internet providers, you know,internet types, right?
(43:38):
So again, your fibers or metro Eor regular broadband wireless 5G
for LT fi, 5G, wireless it's gotstuff for all of it.
So, and it's just a better wayto simplify management, right?
It's just you get bettervisibility with that.
You could see, you know, againthe big three that it, it looks
(44:00):
at these legs, right?
Or each I s P is packet loss,latency and jitter, right?
So that's you know, it'sconstantly measuring those three
things from each internetcircuit and then makes its
intelligent decision on where tosend that packet or when it
comes in, or which leg to sendit over.
So, at least in the Vitelloworld each.
(44:20):
I'm gonna say each I s P has itsown tunnel, so again, it makes,
is, it makes connections to boththe controller and other SDM
boxes over IP sec.
And then it makes a tunnel overeach interface as well.
Each provider gets a, gets anown its own isp, so it handles
failover seamlessly.
(44:42):
Like for example, if you havetwo ISPs going into an SDWAN box
and one fails, the end user hasno idea.
The SD WAN automatically I don'tknow, it's a bundle.
It, It's probably that's thesimplest word for it.
But it's basically taking thosetwo ISPs and making it one big
pipe.
And then basically if the I S Pgoes down it then ju it.
(45:02):
Senses that, and then doesn't,you know, it drops that from its
table and the end user has noidea.
So, and then when it comes backup, it just brings it back into
the fold.
And again, the end user has noidea.
So failover is seamless.
Not noticeable, which is alwaysa big one.
Cuz in the old days, right, theold land days you know, you're
usually running some sort ofinternal like routing protocol.
(45:23):
Over the popular one in NPLSland is bgp.
So if you're running bgp, thenjust the nature of BGP and how
slow it is till it fails andthen until it, you know, till
the timers run out and all thisstuff, like, there's a hiccup
there.
People are gonna notice, right?
With SD wan it's seamless.
It, they have no idea.
It fails over that quickly andit just basically takes that leg
(45:44):
out of the SD wan fabric andkeeps the other good legs in.
So, like for example, I was at aplace once that they had two
ISPs.
Into an SDWAN box, and then theydid a 5G lte, or I should say
whatever the wireless was, the LLTE e at the time.
And then they had a policy inSDWAN to say, okay, look, use
these two ISPs first, only usethis LTE as an absolute
(46:08):
failover.
It's, if it's the only game intown, that's the only time you
use it, right?
So you can write policy that wayas well to say, you knows kind
of traffic shape andpolicy-based routing, things of
that nature.
So, you know, so that's theflexibility there, you know, you
know, as well.
So, or you know, I've been toplaces that have one I s P and
an m ms MPLS link in there.
(46:28):
And yeah, you basically routeyour phone traffic or web
traffic over the pls and use thei p as a failover and all the
other internet traffic.
It just goes out the the I s P.
So, you know, there's multipleways to really, you know,
benefit from that from thatpolicy-based routing stuff.
So, but yeah, I think thevisibility, the simplified
management really goes a longway with the SDWAN stuff, cuz
(46:50):
it, you know, the reduced cost,right.
You know, we just find costsavings all over with that.
And then, like Alex said,there's less you know, less
vendor lock-in.
Right?
You don't have to rely on avendor all the way through to,
you know, most people stick withone vendor, but you ne you don't
necessarily have to, you canspread that out a little bit.
You know, so that's interestingas well.
So I'm curious to see where itgoes from a security
(47:13):
perspective.
Like it, it has a firewall.
Most of'em have a firewall builtinto them and can give you that
visibility of, you know, logsand things of that nature.
But I think there's a lot morethere to really tap into from a
security perspective.
don't know if Alex or Kyle haveanything to kind add to that,
but I'm curious to see wherethat goes in the next couple of
years.
Alex (47:33):
I'm talking specifically about security.
Pat (47:35):
Yeah, just from a security perspective on the SD wa boxees
say, you know, like, like theyhave them now, but you don't
know how good they are, thatsort of thing.
Like, they're there, they getit.
But, you know, I'm curious tosee if, you know, if it can if
it has any more beef when itcomes to the security stuff like
deep packet inspection or any ofthat kind of crazy stuff that
some of the NextGen firewallshave today.
Alex (47:56):
Well, I'm sure it'll keep getting better and better.
I mean, will it eventuallyreplace a full on firewall?
Maybe for like the rural smallbusiness that will be
sufficient.
I think it's much more likelythat you'll just end up doing
what Palo Alto is doing, whichis you'll buy Palo Alto because
you want a firewall and thenutilize SD WAN as an add-on as
(48:19):
opposed to firewall being theadd-on to the SD WAN product.
Pat (48:22):
Right.
Alex (48:23):
And I'm kind of out of the out of touch with some of the
more recent securitytechnologies out there.
And yeah, maybe, I don't know ifanyone here talking with us
today like you or like, I can'teven think of his name.
What was the guy that was juston our conversation like two
(48:44):
weeks ago or three weeks ago.
But maybe we should ask peoplelike that what the next security
feature will be and then I'll becurious if SD WIN is gonna
support it.
Pat (48:54):
Yeah, that's an interesting take to see what that, I really
like what Palo Alto's doing withthe, there's no separate box for
that then.
So that's, you're spending lesson
Alex (49:02):
Yeah,
Pat (49:02):
it's just a plugin.
Alex (49:03):
because I think generally, so anytime you're talking about
security aisle, at least in myhead, I'm thinking about deep
inspection.
And deep inspection is just soprocessor intensive and you feel
like you need so much beef to dothat, that's almost the opposite
of what the SD WAN is trying todo, which is trying to be like a
lightweight thing.
And that's, yeah.
(49:24):
That's why I think that it'lleventually, it'll become a limit
to what these SD WAN devices cando, because that's not their
immediate thought process, so,
Pat (49:35):
Yeah, no, it's a good it's a good point.
And I, so just a selling pointfor Palo Alto.
You know,
Alex (49:41):
Yeah.
Pat (49:42):
Yeah, again, you're not using, you know, you're not
buying separate boxes.
It's just a plugin for the Palostuff.
And Palo's app Id carries allthe way through the Sdwan.
So you see that app Id, you seethat traffic all the way through
their fabric, which is reallynice.
So it's really nice when itcomes to troubleshooting and
trying to find out, you know,who you know, who.
(50:02):
What's eaten the packet and allthis kind of stuff and you know,
trying to track a lot of thattraffic and whatnot.
So again, you know, depending onvendor, you may, you know, once
it leaves that SD wan edge, youmay not see it until it comes to
the other end.
And if it never gets to theother end, then you don't know
what's eating it inside the SDWAN fabric.
So, pal, you know, Pao does anice job of, you know, it's, it
(50:25):
gives you visibility all the waythrough.
And the their app ID featurefollows it all the way through
as well, keeps it intact, whichis nice.
So plus one for the boys overthere at Palo.
So, always a good always a goodproduct from them.
I've always had a goodexperience with Palo, so, Yeah,
that was kind of it.
That was kind of my spiel.
I didn't wanna get too crazy.
Technical, I mean, there's, youcan certainly deep dive into
(50:46):
Estee Wan for, you know, fordays upon days, but just to, for
those that may not be familiarwith it, or maybe just getting
into the field.
I feel like Estee Wan was a goodtopic cuz it's everywhere, or at
least you'd say it's a lot ofplaces it's really starting to,
you know, creep into moreplaces.
Like we said, you know, allsizes of business and things of
that nature.
(51:07):
So I feel like it was a goodtime to talk to the Sdwan stuff
and and kind of give you the50,000 foot view.
But if you're looking for more,certainly like we said,
VeloCloud, Palo Alto, silverPeak, Cisco Vitello, you take a
couple flyers on those.
I mean, just SD WAN as a.
As a technology.
It's, you know, it's agnosticto, you know, to all those
(51:29):
couple of things I justmentioned, those vendors I just
mentioned.
If you wanna really learn howthe nuts and bolts work you
know, I'll post a couple linksin the show notes if you wanna
take a peek at those and seewhat you just really kind of
dive in and, you know, roll yoursleeves up and whatnot.
So, but I thought it was a goodtopic and to give you a 50,000
foot view and I would assumethose breaking in now they're
(51:50):
gonna at least find you know,sdwan somewhere along their
careers and, you know, quiteearly I would think.
Cause it's here now to stay.
It's not a fringe technologyanymore.
People are really kind of divinginto this yeah.
With both feet.
So, Kyle, anything else from youor Alex.
Alex (52:07):
Well, I was going to close with something we often close
with, and you already touched onit when we said security, and we
talked about it a little bitearlier.
But outside of security, isthere anything else you see as
like the future of SD wan?
Pat (52:22):
I would say the.
Kind of adaptation into thehybrid cloud things.
They're really, I think there'ssome cool things that they're
doing now with some of theironboarding and like multi-cloud
things of that nature.
I know with the Cisco stuff theycall it on-ramp.
So basically you're, if you'rein the multi-cloud game, right?
(52:42):
The, if you're in a AWS andAzure, right?
So, Cisco does they call itCloud OnRamp.
And basically it's just a, it'slike we had it we actually had
it already spun up in the cloud.
I took a flyer on it, like I sawit later after the, after all
the hard part was done.
But basically what they do is ifyou want to do an on-ramp a
(53:03):
cloud on-ramp, it basicallybuilds the whole thing for you.
All you basically do is tie yourcloud ID if you will the tenant
IDs and things of that nature toyour vitello controller.
And basically then Vitello goesout and It builds the networks
and everything right around it.
And you don't really have to doanything.
It builds it all right from apush of a button.
(53:24):
They do it via like a workflow,right?
So it's just boom, you know,spinning up the vnet, carving
out a subnet, spinning up the VMthat's gonna support the sdwan
box.
Boom.
You know, and it's, you know,it's done.
So, I probably should havelooked at that a little earlier.
I did.
I did it the hard way and spunit up myself manually.
But it's just me being sort of arookie when it comes to some of
(53:46):
the cloud stuff.
I'm probably at this pointworking harder, not smarter,
but, you know, hopefully somedaythat may change.
So I don't know.
But Yeah, they basically makethat on-ramp process real easy.
And then if you're working inmultiple clouds, they have a
hook in, somewhere in thebackend.
It's still kind of fuzzy to me,but somewhere in the backend,
they basically can hook the two.
(54:08):
say say if I was an AWS andAzure you know, and you spun up
a, an SD RamBox in both there'ssomewhere on the back end where
it's, they can sort of blendthose two clouds together and
fail over and all kinds of crazystuff.
So I, I see some cloud stuffreally kind of taken off with
the with the sdwan stuff.
So curious to see what thatlooks like in the next couple of
(54:28):
years and how they sort ofreally integrate that more and
get that visibility across,especially across multi-cloud.
Cause I think a lot of peopleare looking at multi-cloud now.
So I think again, that, that'sthat vendor interoperability
that we talked about a littlebit ago.
Like, how do you make Azure workwith AWS and vice versa.
And so I think some of them aresort of bringing everybody to
(54:49):
the table and, you know, kind ofbeing the peacemaker there.
So curious to see how that goes.
Alex (54:54):
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's see if there's anythingelse.
Well, it's a common theme justabout anytime we have any
technology, we'll talk aboutmachine learning and ai.
Cuz you kind of go back to oneof the fundamental things that
we talked about that Sdwan coulddo is it can intelligently route
traffic over differentconnections that you have.
So the simplest example we cangive people is probably talking
(55:19):
about voice, which is reallyjitter dependent, like high
jitter not good for voice.
So if it sees a low jitter path,you know, SD WANs today can move
traffic over intelligently tomaybe a path that has less
jitter.
But I'm sure that'll justcontinue to get much more
advanced to the point where it'sgonna any application and not
(55:44):
something that's justspecifically voice.
It's any application it's gonnahave much more information and
just be able to better routetraffic across the links that
are better suited forapplication X, y, Z for whatever
reason that may be.
So I'm sure that'll justcontinue to evolve and.
And I don't deal with SDN allthe time.
So I know when I was dealingwith a lot, that was very manual
(56:07):
process and it's probably much,so much less so the case today.
And by manual process, I meangetting like specific
applications to go over certainlinks.
So just to where that gets tothe point where it's just
automatically doing thatintelligently.
It'd be interesting to see wherethat goes.
The only anything else wouldprobably be interested to see
(56:31):
automation when it comes to SDwin.
You touched on it a little bit,how to, it could automatically
deploy an environment, butsimilar kind of concept where it
can, it, can it control orautomatically deploy itself in
another cloud region toaccommodate your already
existing automation strategy,which might be spin up x amount
(56:51):
of boxes if we need it, but.
Now there's an SD WAN componentto it also, cuz you need to have
to touch base with the datacenter that you have.
So, piecing SD WAN into thisjust broader automation that
everyone's trying to do, beinteresting to see what they can
accomplish with that.
Pat (57:12):
Yeah, I think a lot of automation is already sort of
here.
And I'll kind of touch on alittle bit.
It's not Sdwan, but it's thatsoftware defined networking and
that it's in the same family.
Cisco's DNA center right, is abig one with that as well.
Again, very, you know, gooeydriven, template driven, all
your switches are the same, youknow, things of that nature.
(57:33):
And they give you a spot whereyou can, you know you can
basically run scripts and push'em down and all kinds of stuff.
And, you know, again, theautomation and the workflows and
sort of how they have that, youknow, there.
So, you know, DNA center's doinga lot of that already, and I'm
sure Estee Wan is not that farbehind with a lot of that.
You know, the automation stuff,the Python scripts, Ansibles
(57:57):
again, all North and southboundyou know, API stuff and you
know, getting Intel from yourboxes on, you know, depending on
whether you, how you wanna doit, you know, most popular by
api you know, things of thatnature.
So yeah, I'm curious to see howthat rolls over the next couple
of years as well as you know,some of the automation stuff and
taking the taking theintelligence game one step one
(58:17):
or two steps further.
So Kyle, anything else from youotherwise?
We'll we'll get outta here andwe're right around that hour
mark, so it's always good.
Kyle (58:26):
No, that's pretty that covers it pretty much for me.
I'm the newbie here, so I'm I'mlearning a lot right on the, on
Pat (58:32):
So, so what you're saying is you're gonna go to your boss
tomorrow and be like, yo, weneed Estee Wan.
Like today.
Kyle (58:37):
Most certainly.
Pat (58:39):
Be like, I got a guy.
Well, that's awesome.
So, all right buddy.
Thanks for joining this week.
We will wrap it up here for youon this I thought it was a good
episode on SD wan.
So it's everybody's got anyquestions certainly hit us up.
We like helping y'all out andmaking the picture a little
clearer so everybody's got anyquestions.
Certainly let us know.
We're all over social media.
Everybody can find our stuff inthe show notes.
(59:01):
All of our socials are there.
So yeah, there's multiple waysto get ahold of us.
So, obviously make sure youvisit our website,
breakingbytespod.io.
can subscribe to the show rightfrom there on multiple
platforms.
Or if you just need an RSS feedthat's there as well.
So you'll never miss a show Nosarating on the Apple Podcast.
That would be great if you stillsimply tell a friend too.
(59:24):
That's always good word of mouthworks just as well these days.
So, again, LinkedIn, Twitter,Instagram, Facebook there's a
Discord server out there.
The surveys still hanging outthere.
All of that stuff's in the shownotes.
I'll put a couple of links thatwe talked about SD WAN stuff
today.
I'll put that in the show notesthere as well.
And that's it boys.
(59:44):
Another good episode and we'll,Alex, you got a guest next week.
I think we got somebody comingon.
An old friend of ours, if I'mnot mistaken.
Alex (59:52):
Yeah.
Like we've said before, it comesup a lot, but another
conversation on AI machinelearning.
I'm sure chat G P t will bementioned, but it's the most
interesting thing out there, sowhy
Pat (01:00:05):
that That it is.
All right.
So we're not gonna tell you hisname but so you gotta tune in
for that.
So, tune in next week for somecool AI discussions with our a
good buddy of ours that Alex andI used to work with.
That seems to be a theme here atthe show.
We're just bringing everybodyback and it's all good.
So, all right, buddy.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks.
everybody, welcome back to this week's edition of Breaking
Down the Bites.
As usual, I'm your host Pat.
You can find me on Twitter atlayer eight packet.
That is the number eight.
You can find Kyle on Twitter atDan 2 56.
You can find the show on TwitterBreaking Bites pod.
Alex, you're not on social, soif anybody wants to get a Alex,
(00:21):
just hit the shows Twitter andwe will certainly get it to him.
So we are pretty active onTwitter, so come say hello.
The more friends, the better thetime is.
So, also if you like the show,don't forget to subscribe on
your streaming platform ofchoice.
As usual.
We always like those numbers andpeople coming to say hi.
So, Pick it out, subscribe,like, share all that kind of
(00:45):
good stuff.
And more ears and eyes on us.
It's always good.
So the three amigos are backagain.
We had a rough few weeksschedules.
Alex, you're on vacation,enjoying Disney World down there
in sunny Florida.
And so Kyle and I had to fendfor ourselves and do the show
you know, do the show as a duorather than a trio.
(01:06):
But that's okay.
All back and rocking androlling, right?
So, back from vacation.
Mr.
Alex.
What's up man?
How
Alex (01:13):
Oh, doing pretty well, obviously back from extended
vacation to the cruise too.
So it was Disney World followedby a cruise, so it was 11 days
and I'm back.
I'm ready.
Pat (01:26):
man?
Some people got all the luck,let me tell you, man.
Oh man.
Kyle, what's up man?
What are you doing?
What are you up to?
Any Eddie Cruises for you?
Kyle (01:35):
No.
I mean, if it keeps raining likethis though, maybe I could.
Float down the road in like alittle dinghy or something.
Pat (01:41):
We'll just build ourselves a boat and get rolling.
Yeah.
It was raining the last likethree days.
There's been nothing but rain
Kyle (01:49):
Mm-hmm.
Pat (01:50):
in the front yard and everything.
It's brutal out there.
Kyle (01:53):
And that's that's your weekly weather report from Kyle,
so
Pat (01:56):
That's right.
That's right.
I expect it every week now.
What's the weather like?
Alex (02:02):
It's beautiful where I'm at.
Pat (02:03):
That's
Alex (02:04):
you're wondering,
Pat (02:05):
that's as expected.
Kyle (02:07):
you're right.
Pat (02:07):
expected.
No.
All good.
All good.
So everybody's back this week.
A few tidbit or notes Alex.
Well first of all, what was yourfavorite ride at Disney?
I have to know.
Alex (02:19):
well, I went to Animal Kingdom and Epcot and there was
two that stood above the rest, Imean, pretty easy, pretty far
ahead of third place probably.
And that was Pandora's flight atAnimal Kingdom and Cosmic Rewind
at Epcot.
Both of those are worth the waitand worth the trip to the parks
just for those rides,
Pat (02:39):
Damn.
Look at that.
That's awesome.
I have done Pandora's flight,which was awesome.
And then so when I was there in17 on the honeymoon, they did
not have the the one in Epcotyet, so I'm sure it was being
built or at least planned upon.
So I'm, so we're going inDecember, so I'm curious to see
(03:01):
what that that looks like inDecember again, so, we'll see.
But like when we were there thefirst time, like toy story land,
none of that was there.
It was all being built.
So I'm interested to see what'sup there.
So, oh, did you do test track atEpcot?
Alex (03:13):
Oh yeah, test.
Yeah, I did test track.
Yep.
Yeah, that was fun.
That was cute.
Cuz my kids were there.
So, you know, obviously it's acompetition then, so you can
build the best car and yeah, myoldest ended up having the best.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that was a good time andRTU was really good.
I mean, that might even be onethat I should have mentioned
(03:33):
too.
I really enjoyed rtu.
It might be because I love themovie.
It's probably, I'm not evenashamed to say it's probably my
top five favorite movies.
Pat (03:41):
All right.
Alex (03:41):
And I really did enjoy the ride ba.
Pat (03:45):
Well, awesome.
That's a good deal.
So everybody's got a little lowdown on Alex's Disney trip, so
it's all good.
All good.
One thing I will mention I don'tknow, Alex, you wanna mention
this too, but this my, for myfirst time at Cisco live, so I'm
excited.
We got the sessions allscheduled, the hotel's good.
The the flight's all scheduled.
(04:06):
So first time out there inVegas.
So I'm ready to rock and roll.
So, Alex, are you going?
Did you say you were going
Alex (04:13):
Yeah, I think the last time we talked about it, I may
have been 50 50, but yeah, I'mbooked, I'm registered, I'll be
out there, so we'll be able tocatch up in a
Pat (04:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm in.
I always
Alex (04:26):
and Nate's gonna be there.
Pat (04:28):
What's that?
Alex (04:29):
Nate
Pat (04:30):
Oh yeah.
Alex (04:31):
be there
Pat (04:32):
it's awesome.
Yeah.
Looking forward to
Alex (04:34):
and I are actually staying in the same hotel.
Pat (04:37):
Where are you staying?
Alex (04:38):
staying at Tropicana?
Pat (04:40):
I'm at the Luxer.
Alex (04:41):
know where.
Yeah, that's kind of like the,don't wanna call it the budget
one, but it's like if your partthat's the cheapest hotel that's
Cisco Live has some type of,Affiliation with so you can get
some discount.
Yeah.
So yeah, if I didn't make he,but he managed to find a place
(05:01):
at Tropicana a while back,probably through some crazy
credit card deal thing that helikes spending half his day
trying to
Pat (05:11):
Yeah.
Alex (05:11):
But yeah, so I got in for like 75 bucks a night.
And that's after taxes andstuff?
Kyle (05:16):
Wow.
Pat (05:16):
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
That's killer.
Alex (05:19):
Yeah.
Pat (05:20):
Yeah, so I'm going I know a bunch of the Cisco champs, the
program that we're a part of,there's a bunch of people going
there, so it'd be nice to putnames with faces and, you know,
they'll be friends for a coupleof days in real life instead of
just cyber life.
So that's always kind of cool.
So always a
Alex (05:37):
Yeah.
And then we get to play thevendor dinner game because this
is the first time that I've gonewhere work hasn't been paying
for my travel.
Pat (05:46):
Okay.
Alex (05:46):
So, They're paying for me to get into the conference,
well, using the learning creditsthat Disney has, but since
they're still technically atravel freeze, the anything
related to travel is on my time.
So the 300 bucks on the hotel Ispent I'm only a few hour drive
away, so it's like a$70 flightif I wanted to do a flight,
(06:08):
which I probably will, but yeah.
But food, this will be the firsttime I've gone to Cisco live and
since the company's not payingfor my food, I'm gonna have to
try real hard to get vendors topay for it.
So that's my
Pat (06:20):
Heck yeah.
Alex (06:20):
4, 4, 4 dinners paid for.
I got one so far.
My Cisco rep guaranteed me a
Pat (06:26):
Nice.
Alex (06:27):
so I gotta get three more and then the C C I E dinner.
But I don't know if I'll go toit, but that's usually a decent
meal, but I can only bring oneperson.
So if I'm there with you andNate, then I kind of feel like
a, an ass
Pat (06:38):
Well, now that we're part of the champs, that there's a
bunch of c Cs in the Champsprogram.
So if they're there, then theycan be my date for the night.
That's cool.
I, there's no shame in my game.
So any of my fellow champs thatare C C I e, that plan on going
to the the dinner you I'm yourplus one.
I have your dibs.
I'm making it public.
Nah, it's gonna be cool.
(06:59):
So we're looking forward tothat.
And I think there is a, there'sa champs thing, I think I wanna
say like Monday night.
It's either Monday night orTuesday night.
They do like a thing with theactual champs.
So like we have our owndedicated space and stuff.
So I'm curious to check that outand kind of hang and see what
all that brings to the table.
So that's kind of cool.
I'm looking forward to it.
Alex (07:17):
it's gonna be exciting.
And if you're not alreadyfamiliar with that, there's
always some big event.
You know, once a week, wherevereveryone that goes to Cisco
Alive can go to, they, theyactually rented out Allegiant
Stadium, a Raider Stadium.
And I'm not big Gwen Stefani'splaying.
Pat (07:33):
Okay.
Alex (07:34):
So if you're into Gwen Savani,
Pat (07:37):
See, I was into her
Alex (07:38):
at Legian Stadium.
And we're there.
Pat (07:39):
I'll tell you that much right now.
That was like my first crush.
I was like, oh man, she'sawesome.
Heck yeah.
Actually have a no doubt on, onvinyl.
So I love I
Alex (07:49):
Well, there you
Pat (07:49):
from Gwen
Alex (07:50):
Well, maybe, so I guess you're gonna head to over and
watch that
Pat (07:54):
See where the wind takes me.
I feel like it's a big task.
Being your first time in CiscoLive, there's just so much going
on.
You're just like, I don't knowwhat to do next.
So I'm sure I'll have a littlebit of that as well.
Alex (08:06):
Yeah, there's the thing that I wanted to do but didn't
get to do it to its full extent,last time I was at Cisco Live
was they started doing escaperooms.
But these escape rooms are itfocused.
So you, so to get outta it, youhave to do things like like
maybe log into an unencrypted SS I D and like mess around with
that and find some stuff to getout of an escape room.
Pat (08:30):
Oh man.
I hope they don't make me like,like code like Java file or JS O
or write a Python script fromscratch.
Cuz I'll be there until like thefollowing week they'll be like,
oh, nope.
Can't go anywhere.
Alex (08:43):
well, you'll just have to take a breakout session on
programming before you do thator
Pat (08:47):
Yeah, I got a bunch
Alex (08:48):
Alright.
There's so much fun.
Yep.
For sure.
Lots of fun.
And then I always like playingthere's like trivia games that
you can win prizes and I've wonsome pretty neat prizes over the
years.
Like a, an Amazon Echo.
Before they were really cheap.
Pat (09:02):
Yeah.
Alex (09:03):
and one of those s n e s emulators that were really hard
to find one year that was likeeveryone's go-to Christmas
present or something.
I won one of those one year.
Pat (09:13):
Yep, for sure.
Yeah, it's interesting.
So if anybody's had Cisco Live,hit us up.
We'll be there.
It's gonna be cool.
So I'm looking forward to that.
So, Kyle, maybe next year youcan come with us, man.
Just be like, yo, cuts down.
Put me on a plane, let's go.
Oh, it's awesome.
So anyway get a little of thatout of the way.
The the topic this week, I feellike the deep dives that we've
(09:35):
done have done pretty well forus.
So pe people have really foundsome value out of it.
So I figured the deep dive thisweek, and it'll kind of be,
it'll in, it'll be in mywheelhouse, if you will, since
I've dealt a lot with it overthe last couple of years.
But I think we would do a deepdive on SDWAN.
I feel like that's a big one.
It's a major player in today'sspace.
(09:56):
It, you know, maybe a coupleyears ago it wasn't really.
Mainstay yet or, you know,center stage.
But I think now people aremoving away from the legacy WAN
types and SD WAN is very verymuch so in the conversation.
So I figure we would take thisepisode and do an SD wan deep
dive.
So I guess I'll kind of get thisstarted off.
(10:16):
And you know, like I said, thelast couple of places I've been
have run a flavor of SD wan andthey're all three different
flavors, if you will.
So I've gotten a wide breadth ofSD wan experience over the last
couple years.
And both from a, you know,maintenance perspective of,
okay, it's already here, just,you know, kind of scale it and
(10:38):
maintain it and from a, youknow, grassroots, completely
greenfield, deploy it and thenmanage it, you know,
perspective.
So, yeah, I figured that thiswould be the good one to do that
with.
So, So, yeah, I guess, I kind ofgive a little depth in depth of
kind of how we got here andwhat, and I think the sdwan
stuff will make a little moresense, but just kind of talking
(11:02):
general scopes like back I don'tknow.
I took my CCNA in 2013.
I started in 2010 and thenpassed it in 13.
And when I passed it in 13,there was still frame relay
questions on my CC n a, whichyou talk about frame relay now
people look at you like you havesix heads, look what the hell's
frame relay.
So, so, so some legacy wanthings, right?
(11:25):
So you have frame relay at leastfrom my perspective when I
started kind of learn about thisstuff, frame relay was the wan
back then.
And Delsey's and all that kindof stuff that made frame relay
work underneath the hood.
And then, so, That from FrameRelay, then PLS came into the
picture and it was yeah, thatwas the darling of the industry
(11:46):
for quite a while.
And, you know, so that was, youknow, end to end QS and, you
know, private connectivity andall that kind of stuff.
Pls, cloud, whatever you wannacall it.
So a lot of voice systems ranover pls cuz it was dedicated Q
os and the flexibility thatcame, that sort of thing.
But then m you know, thedrawback to M pls was cost,
(12:09):
right?
It was really expensive.
Right?
And depending on how manyoffices you had or how many
sites you had and to drop an mpll s circuit in there, in some
instances I've been in placesthat have two MPLS and primary
and a secondary to drop both ofthem in there were quite
expensive.
So, And a couple years ago Istarted with SD WAN around, I
wanna say 2018, 2019, somewherein there.
(12:32):
And so they were moving awayfrom the more expensive circuits
of npl l s frame relay, youknow, for those that still had
it out there, things of thatnature.
And go into broadband, right?
Or, you know, just changing overto just business broadband,
right?
But the question was how do youget the M P L S performance or
the benefits of NPL s out of abroadband you know, business
(12:56):
class circuit, right?
So I think that's where SD WANcomes in and sort of blends the
two together.
And so the idea of SD wan it hasmultiple.
I should say ideas wrappedaround it.
Right.
But it's the idea is tobasically from an SDWAN
perspective, get a get, youknow, I should say from a WAN
(13:19):
perspective, I.
Basically use just whatevertransports you want to use,
right?
Whether that's, if you wannastick with mpls, great.
If you wanna, if you want to geta broadband circuit, a business
class, i s p in there, great.
If you wanna do cellular orgreat, you know, that kind of
thing.
SD WAN can terminate all ofthose connections and then
(13:40):
basically be intelligent enoughto to make its decisions on
which.
Which circuit or with which leg,which transport to actually use
based off of its ownintelligence of, okay, packet
loss jitter latency, things ofthat nature.
It's constantly measuring forthose three types, or I should
(14:00):
say those three things, it'smeasuring those on each one of
the legs, and then based off ofthose measurements it
intelligently chooses whichconnection to use.
So you have that automaticfailover, you have that
intelligence to it.
You have, you know, you canprefer, you know, in the
settings or, you know, howeveryou design it.
(14:20):
You can prefer, you know, oneleg over the other two, or
however many you have.
Say you have three legs, right?
You can load balance across allthree.
You can prefer one over theother two.
You can do two over the otherone, you know, that sort of
thing.
So there's quite a bit offlexibility and it scales very
well as, as well.
So from the underbelly of that,The SD WAN takes the, you know,
(14:44):
the intelligence out of it,right?
So, and Alex and Kyle, you guyshave been around long enough
that, you know, if you had 50sites, you had 50 routers, and
you were managing all 50 at eachplace, right?
So, you know, you had the s SSHinto each, you know, router or
switch or whatever you're doing,and, you know, make those
changes.
And it was very time consumingand blah, blah, blah.
(15:04):
So what Sdwan does is withsoftware defined networking,
right?
It's a it's a central place tomanage all.
So however many sites you have.
And then basically that configis then pushed down to each of
the actual boxes on site.
So you're taking the, you'retaking the intelligence off the
actual box, or I should say thecontrol plane, really off the
(15:27):
actual box and bringing it to acentral, centralized location.
And so that way, you know, youcan have 50 sites today and you
can have a hundred sitestomorrow.
And basically you're justdeploying the box at each site
and the configuration getspushed down and off you go.
Right?
So that it's very scalable inthat fashion.
(15:48):
So.
But it's very centrally managed.
Again, you know, the brain livesat a central location, and then
everybody sort of, you know, allthe, I should say spokes, right?
Maybe it's a little better tosay a hub and spoke.
With that terminology everybodycalls home, right?
Each spoke calls home or youknow, every now and then it
checks in to make sure it'sstill there.
(16:08):
And then if something needs tobe pushed down, if the
configuration needs to be pusheddown, then it comes from the
brain and goes downhill, right?
Goes southbound, if you will, intoday's technology.
So those are some of the thingsthat, you know, I've seen with
SD WAN that make, you know,larger enterprises life's a
little easier with scale, withyou know, configurations all
being the same, working fromtemplates, right?
(16:30):
So each one of those, or you canmake as many templates as you
want, but the idea is totemplatize your configurations,
right?
Not just you know, Not just have50 sites and 48 of them are all
different, right?
So the idea is then to push youknow, templatize it, you get
your standard config across theboard.
That way it's much easier tomanage, et cetera, et cetera,
you know, et cetera.
(16:50):
So I said a lot there.
Did you guys have any sort ofquestions as we kind of jump in
here with either what it, whatits purpose is, what it's trying
to do, and kind of where it's,you know, where it's at the
current state of today'snetworks?
Alex (17:08):
I think you, I guess you really kind of focused on two
different things just now whenyou're trying to explain SD
WANs.
So, and like you said, it wasquite a few minutes there of
explaining it.
So if you were trying to defineSD WAN and weren't trying to use
like the dictionary definitionof it, what.
What's the simplest way youcould explain SD wan?
(17:31):
So would you say, based on whatyou just said, that SD WAN is
allowing you to use severaldifferent types of
connectivities or such as mpl, ls, internet cellular, combining
those and then kind of givingyou a centralized management to
(17:53):
intelligently do stuff with it?
Or
Pat (17:56):
that's probably
Alex (17:57):
describe
Pat (17:57):
That's probably the best way.
So I, you know, SD WAN basicallyuses software right?
To control, you know, the bigthree connectivity management
and the data, the services,right in between, you know,
whatever you have data senators,remote offices, cloud, you know,
the big three cloud, you know,that kind of thing.
So it bridges all of thosetogether from a WAN perspective,
(18:19):
right?
So, especially now with the, andI'll kind of touch on the cloud
thing, especially now with theexplosion of the cloud.
Like if you were on a, on an PLl s.
Network.
Right?
Or wan, how would you get an M PL S circuit in your cloud?
That doesn't exist.
That doesn't compute, right?
So I think Estee Wan does a nicejob of, you know, being able to
bridge all of that, you know,together.
(18:41):
And I think the old legacy wanstuff, right?
For folks that have been aroundfor a bit, the old way the wind
used to work is everything wasback hauled through a data
center, right?
So you had npl, l s, you know,connecting all your sites, but
the security stack right was ata data center and then basically
all the traffic had to come backto that data center, get
(19:03):
scrubbed through the securitystack, and then out the, out to
the internet from the datacenter and not locally or like a
local, you know, internetbreakout at wherever the site
may be.
So SD WAN combats that as well.
You can still do it that waywith SD wan I've seen it done
that way, but most of them, mostof the.
Modern designs they do a localinternet breakout right at the
(19:27):
site, and you're not backhauling traffic anymore.
So, but at the end of the day,kind of defining what it is,
we're trying to throw a couplewords around it.
It's basically you're usingsoftware to control
connectivity, management and thedata in between your, you know,
in between your w insights inbetween your data centers,
again, data centers, remoteoffices, cloud resources, right?
(19:48):
So, it basically, and the otherthing too it's the big one here,
it's, it decouples, like I said,it decouples the control plane
from the data plane.
You're taking the brains off ofthe local box at your actual
sites and bringing it to acentral place where then it is
centrally managed and then theconfiguration is pushed down to
(20:08):
the actual boxes.
So I hope that answers a littlebit of your question.
Alex (20:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, certainly I'm familiarwith SD wan.
I'm just trying to try to seehow you would describe it.
Cause I think SD WAN can bedefined a few different ways by
different vendors, but I think.
Looking for a definition that istrue amongst every vendor, and I
think that's probably the case,especially the two things that
(20:35):
you mentioned and focused on.
Pat (20:38):
Yep.
We kind of touched on it before,but I think one of the SD wan's
sort of key features, right, isthe ability to manage multiple
connection types, right?
Whether it be mpls, whether itbe broadband, whether it be like
cellular or wireless, things ofthat nature.
And then basically you cansegment traffic within.
Those within multiple segments,right?
(21:01):
You can chop that up and, youknow, basically send it along
the wan, right?
So, you know, you can think ofit as for those of you that are
familiar, think of it asmultiple vfs, right?
You can split that traffic.
However, you know, if you needto keep separate traffic within
your wan, you can do that withSD wan.
Send them within multiplesegments or vfs and, you know,
(21:23):
they use the same pipes, theyuse the same technologies, but
they don't know, you know, thothose two vfs don't know each
other exists, right?
That sort of thing.
So there's multiple ways to kindof, you know, skin that cat, if
you will.
So, I feel like that's a bigone.
I also think the big one thereis the, again, the traditional
WAN model is, you know, backhauling all that traffic.
(21:44):
So then at your data center youhave to have these, you know,
massive scales of, you know,firewalls and circuits and all
that kind of stuff to handle allof that traffic.
Now you don't, you know, with sD A, you don't have to, cuz all
the internet traffic is still,you know, with the security
stuff that the SD WAN boxes nowhave it the, it can be done
(22:05):
right there at the edge and, youknow, broken out and sent to the
internet right from the actualsite instead of back hauling,
you know, it all.
So I think that that definitelyhelps as well.
Alex (22:15):
I was just gonna mention cause I think another question
that may come up is like, how isSD WAN getting better or how's
it evolving?
And I think it's probably bestfor people to realize that, oh,
I think when SD WAN was firstreally catching on, it was
really, people just thought ofit as a way to connect back to
that data center, a simple wayto connect back to it.
They didn't wanna have to throwin a router that they had to
(22:37):
configure some complicated VPNtunnel that they didn't know
about it, how to do that.
And if you have 200 sites, thatcan get complicated.
So I think Estee Wan's firstpurpose was, Hey.
Remote office, get back to, youknow, get back to this my own
little internal cloud, I guessyou can say.
And now it's evolving too.
(22:58):
They can do quite a bit more,like you said now they have
security functions on them andjust now the, you know, several
different types of connectivityyou can plug into them and now
they're more intelligent andthey can pick, okay, this voice
traffic should go over thisconnection that you're running
because this says lower jitter.
(23:18):
And yeah, it's just, cuz like Isaid I think it's interesting to
know where it's going in thefuture and I think it's a good
idea for people to understandwhere it's gone through so far.
So just wanted to chime inthere.
Pat (23:33):
Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.
I think that it has come quite abit and I actually forgot that
when Alex, when you and I workedat Evolve, they sort of got
their own.
They put out their own versionof SD wan.
It really, it wasn't called thatat the time.
But I, you know, speaking ofNate we, we you know, he was
kind of working a lot with that.
It was like evolves a little, Idon't wanna say homegrown, I
(23:55):
guess you wanna call it, it'sprobably the best word for it,
but it was ba you know, I thinkthey called it what the bonder
or something.
It was some terminology but itwasn't SD a at the time, but it
basically served the same fun,the function, right.
So, you know, we had customersthat wanted to try it, and it
basically just put two, two rawISPs into this bonder, into a,
you know, a glorified Linux box.
(24:16):
Right.
And it, you know, it madeconnections with the head end,
which was, you know, evolve'sdata center at the time and
then, you know, left from there.
So Evolve was doing that, like,that was probably what, 2015,
Alex?
Something like that.
So that was a little evenbefore.
Some of the, you know, the EsteeWAN verbiage was out there and
it was a buzzword.
So, but yeah, so that was, youknow, a cool little taste of,
(24:37):
you know, how some of thatworked and whatnot.
And then, you know, in the lastcouple years, it's certainly,
you know, Estee Wan has explodedto everybody.
Everybody's got, it seems likeeverybody's got a flavor of
Estie Wan now know.
Alex (24:48):
Right.
Yep.
For sure.
Pat (24:51):
So I guess some of the, I don't wanna get too into the
details, but at a high level,right?
So, yeah, most of the, you know,we talked about okay, so you're
abstracting the brains from theactual boxes, right?
The intelligence of the routers,switches, whatever it is.
So where does that go?
Right?
So most of your SD WAN providersnow are cloud-based, like the
(25:11):
brain is in a cloud, right?
I mean, you can host ityourself.
I don't necessarily recommend itbut you know, you can do that.
But most of them, you know, likefor example, Ciscos they host it
in aws, right?
And, you know, VeloCloud right?
Does the same thing.
Basically it's all cloud hosted.
So, you know, Palo Alto, samedeal.
It's all cloud hosted.
(25:32):
I think they do have versions.
I think Cisco has a version ofthe Cisco Vitello is what they
call it.
You can do you can download likean ova, a VM machine to, to be
the Marines.
But is Cisco already hosted?
Why, like, why, what's the pointof that?
So, so yeah, most of'em aregonna be cloud hosted, and then
basically it's just all webbased, right?
You get in there through a gooeyand start pointing and clicking
(25:52):
and building, building yourstuff.
The main gist of it is you'rebasically taking I guess trying
to formulate this better.
So the you know, like I said ifyou have configurations that
you're doing, you're basicallythen pushing it down to the
actual devices via templates orwhatever.
(26:13):
And then also but that's, thatcommunication is actually done
over IP sec tunnels.
So it's all encrypted.
So you don't have any sort ofreal data hanging out there.
It's all in ip sec tunnels.
And then basically, if one sitewanted to talk to another site,
the head end or the brains isn'tinvolved at all.
They build automatic tunnels toeach other.
(26:35):
Right.
So again, so that takes thatback haul piece out of it, cuz
you don't necessarily need it.
It's intelligent enough to sortof know its own.
Wan or its own neighbors, andthen basically, Hey, I need to
get to here.
I'm gonna form automatic tunnelwith you and, you know, off you
go, sort of thing.
So, some other terminologyyou'll sort of hear on, on, on
(26:56):
as they're building or as the SDwan functions build their
tunnels you'll hear an overlayand an underlay.
So basically the underlay is theISPs, right?
The physical part of that.
Right.
And then the overlay is theactual tunnels that SD wan
builds on top of the underlay.
So they split it out into thatparticular, you know,
(27:17):
terminology.
So again, not to get too crazyinto the weeds, but some of the
g generic terms you'll hear whendealing with SD wan overlay and
underlay are a big onecontroller, obviously the brains
that, that's another big one.
So just trying to.
Piece, you know, some of thistogether.
So, but yeah everything from acommunication standpoint,
whether you're going to thecontroller or to another actual
(27:38):
S two RamBox it, it is all ipsec VPN tunnels.
So, that's also you know, a bigone there as well.
So, Kyle, any questions withthat or Alex any other
questions?
Alex (27:50):
Well, you mentioned underlay and overlay and that
was, those were terms I wantedto use earlier on, but I feel
like some people, if they're notin this space, struggle with
that concept cuz that is,especially for someone in
networking who understandsthat's the easiest way to
describe it really.
And you mentioned IP sec andagain, if people are in this
(28:11):
space, might see a lot ofsimilarities between like
classic DMV VPNs and how theseSD WANs function, at least
underneath
Pat (28:21):
Yep.
Alex (28:22):
So I feel like a lot of this stuff, the SD WANs do that
technology has been around forquite some time, but They've now
made it much more accessible forpeople that are simply in it.
I mean, you don't have to besome seasoned network engineer
to support it.
Now they've put a, you know, afancy gooey and centralized it
(28:42):
in one place, and now it's muchmore feasible for just about any
organization to run it.
Pat (28:47):
Yep.
Yep.
Alex (28:49):
But,
Pat (28:50):
and I think that's, that, that's a good point I think it,
it facilitates a lot of things.
Like you said the technology'sbeen around there, been around
the block for quite a bit.
SD WAN just kind of, I think,puts a pretty coat of paint on
it, and it makes it a littlemore, you know, a little more
usable from a scalable, youknow, perspective.
So, and I don't know, Alex, Iguess I'll get your your kind of
(29:12):
take on this and, you know,maybe Kyle too.
Do you think your company has tohave a certain number of sites
or a certain size to actuallytake to benefit from SD wan?
Alex (29:26):
Well, I'm not familiar with the SD WAN price models
yet, so I don't know if there'smuch cost to entry.
I would like to think,especially with SaaS models and
some really cheap boxes thatmaybe that it's, you could make
an argument to do it as soon asyou have two or three sites that
really need connectivity to eachother.
So I'm thinking, no, not really.
(29:47):
It's probably still simpler toget an SD WAN solution than set
up full mesh VPN n tunnelsbetween three
Pat (29:55):
Or DMV P editor.
Yeah.
Alex (29:57):
Certainly when you start talking about D VPNs and like
failover solutions with that.
Cuz then the failover solutionsis the other thing too.
Which really, if you're doing itclassically with VPNs it starts
getting really complicated.
Like you have two ISPs and youdon't own your own block and you
have two different public IPaddresses.
Now you're several differenttunnels and failure over
(30:19):
dynamically.
It starts, it just startsgetting much more complicated.
And then at that case, SD WAN isprobably a much simpler
solution.
And if there's not a obviousfinancial drawback to, you know,
like if, again, like the initialcost of just setting it up, if
(30:40):
that's not there, yeah.
I can't see a reason why youwouldn't consider it early on.
But again, I'm not familiar withit, the.
The companies that I've beenwith have either done it
themselves at Evolve IP, or havebeen PlayStation in Disney,
which you know, we're talkingabout scale.
That obviously becomes
Pat (30:58):
Right.
Alex (30:59):
simpler to handle with an S D N solution.
Pat (31:02):
Yeah, I was kind of thinking that myself, like, you
know, originally I thought,well, if you're kind of small,
like I don't really see thepoint of like two or three sites
doing SD wan.
But again, if the money.
Is not, if there's a low costentry.
Yeah.
I wouldn't see why you wouldn't.
But I'd be curious to see ifanybody has any thoughts on that
as like, is SD N meant for thelarger enterprise because of its
(31:25):
scale?
You know, scaling abilities,right?
I think that's probably one ofits biggest pros is the you
know, is the way to scale,right?
So, you know, you're notnecessarily, you know, there's
no, you know, buy-in somethingfrom a vendor, having it shipped
to an office, somebodyconfiguring it and then
(31:46):
reshipping it to wherever itneeds to go, and then having
somebody plug it in and blah,blah blah and all that.
You know, we've all been there.
Now with SD N you can basically,Ship it to wherever it's gonna
go.
Have somebody rack and stackplug it in, it calls home and it
knows where to go.
Right?
That, that zero touchprovisioning is also a large
(32:07):
pro.
Right.
For that for the SDWAN stuff,and again, you can scale in a
matter of, you know, you canspin these things up in a matter
of minutes if you had everythingready to go, you know, from a
template perspective before itactually got to where it's
going.
You know, had that templateready to go.
Serial number boom, it plugs in,you know how plug however many
legs you have in at theseoffices and off you go and it
(32:30):
calls home and, you know, in acouple of minutes you're, you
know, you got traffic flowing.
So it's this whole mind shiftfrom traditional legacy, you
know, networking that we've, youknow, we've all grown up on and
loved, but it's it's definitelya shift in mindset and, you
know, again, talking about theoverlays, the underlays and all
(32:50):
this terminology, right?
Northbound southbound APIs andhow it communicates with the
controllers and all kinds ofcrazy stuff.
It's some really it's a new dayhere in the networking world and
it just feels like, it's somecool stuff and I'm I don't think
it's done sort of growing upyet.
I think that's the land's gotsome growing to do yet.
But I definitely think it'sheading in the right direction.
Alex (33:12):
Agreed.
Pat (33:13):
So, Kyle, anything for you?
You're kind of out of the EsteeWan game, so,
Kyle (33:17):
Yeah.
A little bit.
So, I mean, I'm hearing a lot ofthings that sound really
interesting.
Pretty cool.
I haven't had a lot of hands on.
There any cons, pitfalls thatyou've kind of come across in
the Estie WAN realm versus youknow, I guess maybe the more
traditional legacy style.
Pat (33:36):
yeah.
At least for me, I think andsome are better at this than
others.
A and again, I think that goesback to Alex with the pricing
sort of nomenclature saying,okay, look like, you know, these
vendors that, that have stuffout there, like they're
expecting you to have X amountof sites, so it's cost.
Beneficial then you can justifythat cost.
So that's probably one I wouldsay, Hey, you know, it, you
(33:57):
know, depending on yourinfrastructure you know,
depending on where that pricebreakpoint is, it may or may not
be a good fit for some folks.
The other thing I found too isif you're pushing like
templates, I think they're goodand bad at the same time.
Like I think templates are greatfor things that are standard
across the board, right?
Your NTP servers, your DNSservers, S N M P things of that,
(34:22):
you know, banner messages,things of that nature.
Stuff that doesn't change orshouldn't change, I should say,
from site to site, no matterwhat site you're at, all that
stuff should be the same aacross the boards.
The other part of the templatesis if your environment isn't
quite right, or I should sayisn't quite.
At a space where it can betemplatized, you have to sort of
(34:45):
do like a one-off for like youcan't.
The templates aren't aren'tflexible enough if you have one
or two sites that are just alittle different than the other
ones.
Now the goal there is to getthose two or three sites,
whatever they are you know,those outliers into that
template, right?
Get them structured enough sothey can fit in a template and
(35:06):
everybody's cookie cutter,right?
But if you do have thatenvironment where those, that
wonder two sites is quitedifferent for whatever reason,
it just has enough to just to beannoying, you know, it needs to
do something that all the othersdon't.
You have to create a whole newtemplate for that and basically
do the whole thing over and thenchange your template to fit that
site.
(35:26):
And then that can kind of getinto where you get into like
template sprawl, right?
So you have like a bunch oftemplates and, but the whole
idea is to get your environment,get it towards a spot where
everyone can be fed from thesame.
Template.
I think that's probably a con,but that's more of a management
sort of, you know, con withthat.
I've worked with different SDWAN flavors that some are easier
(35:51):
to kind of set up.
Things like q o s things of thatnature.
Some are better to set up thatthan others.
So if you're not in a if you'rewith a vendor that doesn't make
that easy, that can kind ofbecome a, you know, a little bit
of a rabbit hole sort of thing.
So, it just depends on, youknow, various things.
But, I think the, under theunderlying SD WAN product itself
(36:16):
or what it's, you know what itdoes at a nuts and bolts, no
matter who slaps a vendor nameon it.
I think it's good.
It just depends on these vendorsthat they have their quirks
depending on, you know, how muchthey actually give you eyes
under the covers.
Right.
Because I've had places like andI don't know if this is still
the way or not, but like when Iwas doing the velo cloud Sdwan
(36:39):
stuff, they gave you very littlevisual or I should say a very
little peak under the covers asfar as like what happens in the
back end.
So you basically had control ofyour front end sdwan boxes.
It magically left that sdwan boxand showed up at the SDWAN box
in your data center.
You had no visibility in betweenthe actual SD WAN boxes.
(37:01):
Like you didn't have anyvisibility in the actual fabric
into the cloud, right into thatSD WAN cloud.
So that made it a little hardtrying to figure out, you know,
troubleshooting and things ofthat nature.
Now, on the other hand, theCisco stuff, the Vitello, they
give you full visibility fromunderneath the covers.
So that is fully customizablefrom front to back.
(37:23):
So the other part of that is,yeah, you get the visibility,
that's great, but if you're notlike well-versed enough in it,
it can be daunting to be like,okay, am I doing this right cuz
I'm seeing now all the under thecovers things right.
That sort of thing.
So it can be overwhelming tokind of learn that, you know,
all that piece, all the way fromA to Z.
Kyle (37:43):
Okay.
Alex (37:44):
Yeah, and I'll probably add.
That vendor interoperability isprobably quite a bit harder if
you're talking about an Sdwan nsolution.
Cause you know, you can createan IP sec tunnel between a
thousand different vendors.
But trying to get a vitel towork with silver Peak or 40 Net
(38:06):
or something like that,
Pat (38:07):
That's a good point.
Alex (38:09):
WAN solution is a whole different ballgame.
So, I haven't run into itenough, so I'm sure there's
solutions out there cuz I'm surethey've come across it.
Like, if you acquire a newcompany and they have a thousand
vitelli nodes and you're rockingand VMware Ello cloud, now
there's gotta be some way youcan integrate them.
That would be my thought isvendor interoperability might be
(38:31):
a bit more difficult andProbably a bit harder to move
off a vendor, but it seems likemost people tend to stick with
one vendor anyway, so that'sprobably not a major deal
breaker for a lot of people.
Pat (38:42):
Yeah, the only place I would think of where the vendor
interoperability comes with islike a merger or an acquisition.
Like you said, you know, ifyou're a, if you're a thousand,
thousand shop Vitello and youYeah, you buy a shop that has
48, like, you know, okay, whatdo you, yeah.
How do you blend those twotogether?
Right?
So I think that's probably the,where they see the most, you
know, hills, if you will, froma, from an interoperability, you
(39:05):
know, perspective.
But the other thing I was kindof talk thinking about too is,
you know, like there are somesecurity tools out there that
they have that the Sdwan boxesare sort of, you know, now
coming built in, if you will.
You know, but like, what are theother security tools that you
have to integrate with them?
Like I think there's someshortfalls around that as far as
(39:27):
trying to get it in the, youknow, operate that sdwan box
operating within your existingsecurity stack, right?
Or other sort of tools, right?
So whether that's a scene toolor, you know, like a Splunk or,
you know, things of that nature,like how does that all, you
know, integrate as well?
So there, there may be some, youknow, maybe some pitfalls there.
(39:48):
The visibility, right, that wetalked about before, I mentioned
a few minutes ago that that's abig one.
As well, especially for thesecurity side, right?
You really don't have a wholelot of that, you know,
visibility, you know, things ofthat nature.
So, but yeah.
Hey, who, yeah, who knows, maybethere's some they're developing
some stuff and you know, thatsort of gets gets better every
day.
So it's it's an interesting.
You know, take on, it justdepends on, you know, where we
(40:10):
see it going in the next coupleyears.
But I it's definitely here.
It's a, it's an everyday thing.
It's, you know, it's not just afringe, Hey, larger corporations
can't afford it cuz they'rethrowing money at it sort of
thing.
It's here for everybody, Ithink.
And then I think it's got somereally good some really good
pros to it.
Kyle, you got anything else?
Kyle (40:29):
That was that was what I had for
Pat (40:30):
Cool.
Cool.
So just some vendors I wannathrow out there for you know,
we, we've been talking aboutlike I said, VeloCloud Palo Alto
has a, has their own sdwan nowwhich Palo Altos are nice cuz
they don't require a separate SDWAN box.
It all works within their.
Next Generation firewall.
So if you have, if you'realready on Palo Firewalls, it's
just a, it's a plugin for theirfirewalls, which is kind of
(40:53):
nice.
Silver Peak is the I thinkSilver Peak was one of the first
ones to the game.
So they're always popular.
And then Cisco Vitello you know,it's always a good one.
So obviously Vitello was astandalone company and then
Cisco came and bought them a fewyears ago, so now they just,
they, you know, they basicallycalled Cisco Vitello, so it's
they slapped their name on itand off they go.
(41:14):
I'm trying to think of whatelse.
Like, some use cases,
Alex (41:17):
Val Cloud.
Yeah.
Pat (41:20):
that'd be about it.
Those are the big ones, atleast.
Alex (41:23):
Yeah.
And like you said, at this pointit's kinda like streaming
services.
You got a few guys that kind ofrun the show, but everyone's
doing it.
Pat (41:33):
Yep.
Yep.
So, just a couple of keytakeaways from the SD WAN stuff.
You know, that we kind of spewedout here in no, no particular
order.
But basically SD WAN is the, youknow, it's a WAN technology with
a virtualized, you know, again,here's that term overlay, right?
It's basically abstracting thesoftware, you know, from the
hardware, right?
(41:53):
So you're, again, taking thecentral, you're taking the brain
off the actual individual boxand putting it into a
centralized location, right?
Controller you know, that's thetechnical, you know, term for
it.
So, again network abstraction,right?
Land virtualization, policydriven, centralized management,
right?
You can do all kinds of crazypolicies with how you wanna do
(42:14):
traffic, right?
So, again, q o s is a big one.
You know, with VoIP, obviouslybeing around the last oh geez,
seems like a billion years yeah,you gotta make sure that traffic
is prioritized, things of thatnature.
You know, and it again, itscales, scales, scales very well
from a, you know, both from alocal perspective of, Hey, you
wanna get a third leg in there,or if you can get a third I s p,
(42:36):
great, you know, whatever.
Or from a site perspective,right?
You all of a sudden now youbought somebody and now they're,
you know, they're, they got 50sites across the states, you can
get'em on your wan tomorrow,right?
You know, in a relatively, youknow, short amount of time
versus, you know, the old schoolway of, you know, configuring 50
different routers and sending'emout and getting all that stuff
(42:57):
you know, scheduled and all thatkind of crazy stuff.
So, You know, there, there'svarious ways to architect it,
right?
So it can be cloud-based.
Most of them, most of thecontrollers, like I said, are
cloud-based.
Or you can do it on-prem you cantechnically do a cloud and an
on-prem if you wanted to.
But the way I've seen it done isamazing.
Basically, the controller part,the brains part is all in the
(43:18):
cloud.
And those those boxes just pointthere to a p from a public IP
perspective.
So, you know, you're reducingCapEx, right?
So, you know, hardware, thingsof that nature.
There's no need of, there'sreally no need for specialized
equipment, you know, anymore,that sort of thing.
So, you know, it can terminateall kinds of different.
Internet providers, you know,internet types, right?
(43:38):
So again, your fibers or metro Eor regular broadband wireless 5G
for LT fi, 5G, wireless it's gotstuff for all of it.
So, and it's just a better wayto simplify management, right?
It's just you get bettervisibility with that.
You could see, you know, againthe big three that it, it looks
(44:00):
at these legs, right?
Or each I s P is packet loss,latency and jitter, right?
So that's you know, it'sconstantly measuring those three
things from each internetcircuit and then makes its
intelligent decision on where tosend that packet or when it
comes in, or which leg to sendit over.
So, at least in the Vitelloworld each.
(44:20):
I'm gonna say each I s P has itsown tunnel, so again, it makes,
is, it makes connections to boththe controller and other SDM
boxes over IP sec.
And then it makes a tunnel overeach interface as well.
Each provider gets a, gets anown its own isp, so it handles
failover seamlessly.
(44:42):
Like for example, if you havetwo ISPs going into an SDWAN box
and one fails, the end user hasno idea.
The SD WAN automatically I don'tknow, it's a bundle.
It, It's probably that's thesimplest word for it.
But it's basically taking thosetwo ISPs and making it one big
pipe.
And then basically if the I S Pgoes down it then ju it.
(45:02):
Senses that, and then doesn't,you know, it drops that from its
table and the end user has noidea.
So, and then when it comes backup, it just brings it back into
the fold.
And again, the end user has noidea.
So failover is seamless.
Not noticeable, which is alwaysa big one.
Cuz in the old days, right, theold land days you know, you're
usually running some sort ofinternal like routing protocol.
(45:23):
Over the popular one in NPLSland is bgp.
So if you're running bgp, thenjust the nature of BGP and how
slow it is till it fails andthen until it, you know, till
the timers run out and all thisstuff, like, there's a hiccup
there.
People are gonna notice, right?
With SD wan it's seamless.
It, they have no idea.
It fails over that quickly andit just basically takes that leg
(45:44):
out of the SD wan fabric andkeeps the other good legs in.
So, like for example, I was at aplace once that they had two
ISPs.
Into an SDWAN box, and then theydid a 5G lte, or I should say
whatever the wireless was, the LLTE e at the time.
And then they had a policy inSDWAN to say, okay, look, use
these two ISPs first, only usethis LTE as an absolute
(46:08):
failover.
It's, if it's the only game intown, that's the only time you
use it, right?
So you can write policy that wayas well to say, you knows kind
of traffic shape andpolicy-based routing, things of
that nature.
So, you know, so that's theflexibility there, you know, you
know, as well.
So, or you know, I've been toplaces that have one I s P and
an m ms MPLS link in there.
(46:28):
And yeah, you basically routeyour phone traffic or web
traffic over the pls and use thei p as a failover and all the
other internet traffic.
It just goes out the the I s P.
So, you know, there's multipleways to really, you know,
benefit from that from thatpolicy-based routing stuff.
So, but yeah, I think thevisibility, the simplified
management really goes a longway with the SDWAN stuff, cuz
(46:50):
it, you know, the reduced cost,right.
You know, we just find costsavings all over with that.
And then, like Alex said,there's less you know, less
vendor lock-in.
Right?
You don't have to rely on avendor all the way through to,
you know, most people stick withone vendor, but you ne you don't
necessarily have to, you canspread that out a little bit.
You know, so that's interestingas well.
So I'm curious to see where itgoes from a security
(47:13):
perspective.
Like it, it has a firewall.
Most of'em have a firewall builtinto them and can give you that
visibility of, you know, logsand things of that nature.
But I think there's a lot morethere to really tap into from a
security perspective.
don't know if Alex or Kyle haveanything to kind add to that,
but I'm curious to see wherethat goes in the next couple of
years.
Alex (47:33):
I'm talking specifically about security.
Pat (47:35):
Yeah, just from a security perspective on the SD wa boxees
say, you know, like, like theyhave them now, but you don't
know how good they are, thatsort of thing.
Like, they're there, they getit.
But, you know, I'm curious tosee if, you know, if it can if
it has any more beef when itcomes to the security stuff like
deep packet inspection or any ofthat kind of crazy stuff that
some of the NextGen firewallshave today.
Alex (47:56):
Well, I'm sure it'll keep getting better and better.
I mean, will it eventuallyreplace a full on firewall?
Maybe for like the rural smallbusiness that will be
sufficient.
I think it's much more likelythat you'll just end up doing
what Palo Alto is doing, whichis you'll buy Palo Alto because
you want a firewall and thenutilize SD WAN as an add-on as
(48:19):
opposed to firewall being theadd-on to the SD WAN product.
Pat (48:22):
Right.
Alex (48:23):
And I'm kind of out of the out of touch with some of the
more recent securitytechnologies out there.
And yeah, maybe, I don't know ifanyone here talking with us
today like you or like, I can'teven think of his name.
What was the guy that was juston our conversation like two
(48:44):
weeks ago or three weeks ago.
But maybe we should ask peoplelike that what the next security
feature will be and then I'll becurious if SD WIN is gonna
support it.
Pat (48:54):
Yeah, that's an interesting take to see what that, I really
like what Palo Alto's doing withthe, there's no separate box for
that then.
So that's, you're spending lesson
Alex (49:02):
Yeah,
Pat (49:02):
it's just a plugin.
Alex (49:03):
because I think generally, so anytime you're talking about
security aisle, at least in myhead, I'm thinking about deep
inspection.
And deep inspection is just soprocessor intensive and you feel
like you need so much beef to dothat, that's almost the opposite
of what the SD WAN is trying todo, which is trying to be like a
lightweight thing.
And that's, yeah.
(49:24):
That's why I think that it'lleventually, it'll become a limit
to what these SD WAN devices cando, because that's not their
immediate thought process, so,
Pat (49:35):
Yeah, no, it's a good it's a good point.
And I, so just a selling pointfor Palo Alto.
You know,
Alex (49:41):
Yeah.
Pat (49:42):
Yeah, again, you're not using, you know, you're not
buying separate boxes.
It's just a plugin for the Palostuff.
And Palo's app Id carries allthe way through the Sdwan.
So you see that app Id, you seethat traffic all the way through
their fabric, which is reallynice.
So it's really nice when itcomes to troubleshooting and
trying to find out, you know,who you know, who.
(50:02):
What's eaten the packet and allthis kind of stuff and you know,
trying to track a lot of thattraffic and whatnot.
So again, you know, depending onvendor, you may, you know, once
it leaves that SD wan edge, youmay not see it until it comes to
the other end.
And if it never gets to theother end, then you don't know
what's eating it inside the SDWAN fabric.
So, pal, you know, Pao does anice job of, you know, it's, it
(50:25):
gives you visibility all the waythrough.
And the their app ID featurefollows it all the way through
as well, keeps it intact, whichis nice.
So plus one for the boys overthere at Palo.
So, always a good always a goodproduct from them.
I've always had a goodexperience with Palo, so, Yeah,
that was kind of it.
That was kind of my spiel.
I didn't wanna get too crazy.
Technical, I mean, there's, youcan certainly deep dive into
(50:46):
Estee Wan for, you know, fordays upon days, but just to, for
those that may not be familiarwith it, or maybe just getting
into the field.
I feel like Estee Wan was a goodtopic cuz it's everywhere, or at
least you'd say it's a lot ofplaces it's really starting to,
you know, creep into moreplaces.
Like we said, you know, allsizes of business and things of
that nature.
(51:07):
So I feel like it was a goodtime to talk to the Sdwan stuff
and and kind of give you the50,000 foot view.
But if you're looking for more,certainly like we said,
VeloCloud, Palo Alto, silverPeak, Cisco Vitello, you take a
couple flyers on those.
I mean, just SD WAN as a.
As a technology.
It's, you know, it's agnosticto, you know, to all those
(51:29):
couple of things I justmentioned, those vendors I just
mentioned.
If you wanna really learn howthe nuts and bolts work you
know, I'll post a couple linksin the show notes if you wanna
take a peek at those and seewhat you just really kind of
dive in and, you know, roll yoursleeves up and whatnot.
So, but I thought it was a goodtopic and to give you a 50,000
foot view and I would assumethose breaking in now they're
(51:50):
gonna at least find you know,sdwan somewhere along their
careers and, you know, quiteearly I would think.
Cause it's here now to stay.
It's not a fringe technologyanymore.
People are really kind of divinginto this yeah.
With both feet.
So, Kyle, anything else from youor Alex.
Alex (52:07):
Well, I was going to close with something we often close
with, and you already touched onit when we said security, and we
talked about it a little bitearlier.
But outside of security, isthere anything else you see as
like the future of SD wan?
Pat (52:22):
I would say the.
Kind of adaptation into thehybrid cloud things.
They're really, I think there'ssome cool things that they're
doing now with some of theironboarding and like multi-cloud
things of that nature.
I know with the Cisco stuff theycall it on-ramp.
So basically you're, if you'rein the multi-cloud game, right?
(52:42):
The, if you're in a AWS andAzure, right?
So, Cisco does they call itCloud OnRamp.
And basically it's just a, it'slike we had it we actually had
it already spun up in the cloud.
I took a flyer on it, like I sawit later after the, after all
the hard part was done.
But basically what they do is ifyou want to do an on-ramp a
(53:03):
cloud on-ramp, it basicallybuilds the whole thing for you.
All you basically do is tie yourcloud ID if you will the tenant
IDs and things of that nature toyour vitello controller.
And basically then Vitello goesout and It builds the networks
and everything right around it.
And you don't really have to doanything.
It builds it all right from apush of a button.
(53:24):
They do it via like a workflow,right?
So it's just boom, you know,spinning up the vnet, carving
out a subnet, spinning up the VMthat's gonna support the sdwan
box.
Boom.
You know, and it's, you know,it's done.
So, I probably should havelooked at that a little earlier.
I did.
I did it the hard way and spunit up myself manually.
But it's just me being sort of arookie when it comes to some of
(53:46):
the cloud stuff.
I'm probably at this pointworking harder, not smarter,
but, you know, hopefully somedaythat may change.
So I don't know.
But Yeah, they basically makethat on-ramp process real easy.
And then if you're working inmultiple clouds, they have a
hook in, somewhere in thebackend.
It's still kind of fuzzy to me,but somewhere in the backend,
they basically can hook the two.
(54:08):
say say if I was an AWS andAzure you know, and you spun up
a, an SD RamBox in both there'ssomewhere on the back end where
it's, they can sort of blendthose two clouds together and
fail over and all kinds of crazystuff.
So I, I see some cloud stuffreally kind of taken off with
the with the sdwan stuff.
So curious to see what thatlooks like in the next couple of
(54:28):
years and how they sort ofreally integrate that more and
get that visibility across,especially across multi-cloud.
Cause I think a lot of peopleare looking at multi-cloud now.
So I think again, that, that'sthat vendor interoperability
that we talked about a littlebit ago.
Like, how do you make Azure workwith AWS and vice versa.
And so I think some of them aresort of bringing everybody to
(54:49):
the table and, you know, kind ofbeing the peacemaker there.
So curious to see how that goes.
Alex (54:54):
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's see if there's anythingelse.
Well, it's a common theme justabout anytime we have any
technology, we'll talk aboutmachine learning and ai.
Cuz you kind of go back to oneof the fundamental things that
we talked about that Sdwan coulddo is it can intelligently route
traffic over differentconnections that you have.
So the simplest example we cangive people is probably talking
(55:19):
about voice, which is reallyjitter dependent, like high
jitter not good for voice.
So if it sees a low jitter path,you know, SD WANs today can move
traffic over intelligently tomaybe a path that has less
jitter.
But I'm sure that'll justcontinue to get much more
advanced to the point where it'sgonna any application and not
(55:44):
something that's justspecifically voice.
It's any application it's gonnahave much more information and
just be able to better routetraffic across the links that
are better suited forapplication X, y, Z for whatever
reason that may be.
So I'm sure that'll justcontinue to evolve and.
And I don't deal with SDN allthe time.
So I know when I was dealingwith a lot, that was very manual
(56:07):
process and it's probably much,so much less so the case today.
And by manual process, I meangetting like specific
applications to go over certainlinks.
So just to where that gets tothe point where it's just
automatically doing thatintelligently.
It'd be interesting to see wherethat goes.
The only anything else wouldprobably be interested to see
(56:31):
automation when it comes to SDwin.
You touched on it a little bit,how to, it could automatically
deploy an environment, butsimilar kind of concept where it
can, it, can it control orautomatically deploy itself in
another cloud region toaccommodate your already
existing automation strategy,which might be spin up x amount
(56:51):
of boxes if we need it, but.
Now there's an SD WAN componentto it also, cuz you need to have
to touch base with the datacenter that you have.
So, piecing SD WAN into thisjust broader automation that
everyone's trying to do, beinteresting to see what they can
accomplish with that.
Pat (57:12):
Yeah, I think a lot of automation is already sort of
here.
And I'll kind of touch on alittle bit.
It's not Sdwan, but it's thatsoftware defined networking and
that it's in the same family.
Cisco's DNA center right, is abig one with that as well.
Again, very, you know, gooeydriven, template driven, all
your switches are the same, youknow, things of that nature.
(57:33):
And they give you a spot whereyou can, you know you can
basically run scripts and push'em down and all kinds of stuff.
And, you know, again, theautomation and the workflows and
sort of how they have that, youknow, there.
So, you know, DNA center's doinga lot of that already, and I'm
sure Estee Wan is not that farbehind with a lot of that.
You know, the automation stuff,the Python scripts, Ansibles
(57:57):
again, all North and southboundyou know, API stuff and you
know, getting Intel from yourboxes on, you know, depending on
whether you, how you wanna doit, you know, most popular by
api you know, things of thatnature.
So yeah, I'm curious to see howthat rolls over the next couple
of years as well as you know,some of the automation stuff and
taking the taking theintelligence game one step one
(58:17):
or two steps further.
So Kyle, anything else from youotherwise?
We'll we'll get outta here andwe're right around that hour
mark, so it's always good.
Kyle (58:26):
No, that's pretty that covers it pretty much for me.
I'm the newbie here, so I'm I'mlearning a lot right on the, on
Pat (58:32):
So, so what you're saying is you're gonna go to your boss
tomorrow and be like, yo, weneed Estee Wan.
Like today.
Kyle (58:37):
Most certainly.
Pat (58:39):
Be like, I got a guy.
Well, that's awesome.
So, all right buddy.
Thanks for joining this week.
We will wrap it up here for youon this I thought it was a good
episode on SD wan.
So it's everybody's got anyquestions certainly hit us up.
We like helping y'all out andmaking the picture a little
clearer so everybody's got anyquestions.
Certainly let us know.
We're all over social media.
Everybody can find our stuff inthe show notes.
(59:01):
All of our socials are there.
So yeah, there's multiple waysto get ahold of us.
So, obviously make sure youvisit our website,
breakingbytespod.io.
can subscribe to the show rightfrom there on multiple
platforms.
Or if you just need an RSS feedthat's there as well.
So you'll never miss a show Nosarating on the Apple Podcast.
That would be great if you stillsimply tell a friend too.
(59:24):
That's always good word of mouthworks just as well these days.
So, again, LinkedIn, Twitter,Instagram, Facebook there's a
Discord server out there.
The surveys still hanging outthere.
All of that stuff's in the shownotes.
I'll put a couple of links thatwe talked about SD WAN stuff
today.
I'll put that in the show notesthere as well.
And that's it boys.
(59:44):
Another good episode and we'll,Alex, you got a guest next week.
I think we got somebody comingon.
An old friend of ours, if I'mnot mistaken.
Alex (59:52):
Yeah.
Like we've said before, it comesup a lot, but another
conversation on AI machinelearning.
I'm sure chat G P t will bementioned, but it's the most
interesting thing out there, sowhy
Pat (01:00:05):
that That it is.
All right.
So we're not gonna tell you hisname but so you gotta tune in
for that.
So, tune in next week for somecool AI discussions with our a
good buddy of ours that Alex andI used to work with.
That seems to be a theme here atthe show.
We're just bringing everybodyback and it's all good.
So, all right, buddy.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.