SD-WAN and MPLS

meraki2champion
Getting noticed

SD-WAN and MPLS

hi ,how can you compare SD-WAN to MPLS in terms of security enhancement and cost ? 

i have a client who has been insisting to us MPLS and not SD-WAN how can i advice him?

6 REPLIES 6
rhbirkelund
Kind of a big deal

Well - MPLS is usually a business service provided from the ISP which may be rather expensive, and afaik ISP limited, meaning you have to use the same ISP across the entire MPLS.
SD-WAN simply requires an Internet Connection, whether you use AT&T on one end, T-Mobile on the other, and so on.
LinkedIn ::: https://blog.rhbirkelund.dk/

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well explained thanks a lot

ali_abbass85
Getting noticed

Hi @meraki2champion 

I believe the terms are not comparable, you can still use SD-WAN over MPLS in a special setup.

MPLS is a dedicated service with high availability and SLA, which mostly does not use the usual ISP nodes to get connected.

If your customer is insisting on a single MPLS link, versus a dual ISP Link with SDWAN, then it depends on the situation. At some locations/countries, the internet might not be as stable as required, even not resilient as required, hence an MPLS link might seem to be more efficient.

I believe you should study the situation more before advising your customer.

yes thank you very much 

 

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

The greatest redundancy you can get is by using two different providers - something no provider will sell you.  It is simply a statistical fact of redundancy, so there is no arguing about this one.

 

I wrote an article about this some time ago which also includes the maths behind this:

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Security-SD-WAN/MAIL-Meraki-array-of-inexpensive-links/m-p/22661

 

As for security - MPLS circuits are no encrypted.  SDWAN is.

 

MPLS doesn't usually support performance based routing across different links.  Typically MPLS can only use dual links for load balancing for redundancy.

SDAN can do performance based routing.

https://documentation.meraki.com/Architectures_and_Best_Practices/Cisco_Meraki_Best_Practice_Design/...

 

Typically MPLS circuits come with no monitoring or only basic monitoring (such as circuit use, sometimes latency and loss as well).  Meraki SDWAN provides rich monitoring.

 

yes you are right and with MPLS you need to connect multiple of them in a WAN at brances or campuses hence they are very expensive to deploy but with SD WAN you can be able to provide security across WAN just from a single console hence they reduce operational cost

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