Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a cloudified and infrastructure agnostic WAN architecture. It can overlay widely available connectivity options and hardware platforms such as off-the-shelf white boxes and miniPCs. It can be rolled over virtual infrastructures as well such us Virtual Machines (VMs) and multi clouds. SD-WAN employs Software Defined Networking (SDN) and NFV principles to deploy and manage its WAN, LAN and security services, routing and switching optimized cloud access.
Unlike rigid and hard-wired legacy data networks SD-WAN is an intelligent abstracted overlay running its multitude of services over secure and encrypted tunnels. Being an abstracted network SDWAN is agnostic to underlay hardware and communications networks. Having said that in SDWAN control and data planes are separated. The decision of routing, switching and overall control and management of network are done in software separated from specialized routing and switching gears (unlike in common networks). The latter becomes a “dumb” box simply moving packets forward and inward. This explains the flexibility, agility, intelligence and great cost effectiveness that SDWAN delivers.