Traffic Management and Application Control in SD-WAN

SD-WAN offers a more agile and efficient solution for managing network traffic and application performance, delivering a level of flexibility, control, and optimization that traditional WAN technologies simply can’t match. Let’s dive into two core SD-WAN capabilities that enhance application performance, security, and overall user experience: Advanced Traffic Management and Application Control.

What is Advanced Traffic Management?

Advanced traffic management is about more than just sending data across the network. It involves intelligent routing, prioritization, and optimization of data traffic across a network. It ensures that applications are delivered efficiently and with the required Quality of Service (QoS). In the context of SD-WAN, advanced traffic management is the ability to dynamically steer traffic based on real-time application performance, network conditions, and organizational policies.

Key capabilities of advanced traffic management within SD-WAN include: 

• Dynamic Path Selection: SD-WAN enables real-time decision-making on which path to take based on network conditions such as latency, jitter, and packet loss. With advanced traffic management, this process becomes more intelligent, allowing networks to continuously monitor traffic patterns and adjust routing dynamically.
• Application-Aware Routing: SD-WAN can distinguish between different types of application traffic in real-time, ensuring that business-critical applications like VoIP, video conferencing, and other enterprise systems receive top priority over less sensitive applications such as Facebook or YouTube. This ensures that users experience high performance, even during network congestion.
• Performance Optimization: By leveraging techniques such as WAN optimization, advanced traffic management can reduce latency, improve throughput, and minimize packet loss. This is especially crucial for organizations using bandwidth-heavy applications like cloud computing.
• Intelligent Load Balancing: Advanced traffic management ensures that network load is distributed efficiently across available links, reducing bottlenecks and optimizing the end-user experience. This is particularly valuable when dealing with multiple connections, including MPLS, broadband, and 4G/5G links. 

What is Application Control in SD-WAN?

As businesses rely on diverse and complex applications, SD-WAN must provide granular control over how these applications are controlled. Application control in SD-WAN allows for deep visibility into the types of applications running on the network and provides the ability to define policies that optimize their performance and security. 

Why application control is essential in SD-WAN:

• Application Prioritization: Not all applications are created equal. Some require low latency and high bandwidth (such as video conferencing or VoIP), while others can accept some small delay. With application control, businesses can create policies that prioritize critical applications, ensuring they get the resources they need while optimizing performance for lower-priority applications.
• Granular Application Visibility: SD-WAN provides IT administrators the ability to monitor the performance of each application in real time. With this visibility, businesses can quickly identify and resolve performance issues before they become a problem, ensuring that end-users experience minimal disruptions, even in times of network congestion.
• Enhanced Security: Application control also plays a vital role in ensuring the security of the network. By identifying and monitoring the applications running on the network, SD-WAN can enforce security policies and detect potential threats like malicious apps, unauthorized access, and even the app version that is running. This is especially important for organizations that need to comply with regulatory requirements or protect sensitive data. 

SD-WAN in the Real World

• Global Enterprises: Multinational companies need high-performance networking to support applications running across geographically dispersed locations. SD-WAN with advanced traffic management ensures that each location experiences optimal application performance, regardless of distance, while application control policies ensure that mission-critical tools receive the highest priority.
• Cloud-First Organizations: For businesses that rely on cloud-based SaaS applications, SD-WAN can ensure seamless connectivity by intelligently routing cloud traffic through the most efficient paths, while application control policies ensure that bandwidth-heavy applications like video conferencing or cloud storage are prioritized.
• Remote Work: As the remote workforce grows, ensuring secure and efficient access to company applications from any location is essential. SD-WAN dynamically adjusts to varying network conditions and prioritizes remote workers' access to business-critical applications, while application control helps maintain security across remote connections.

Advanced traffic management and application control are not just nice-to-have features, they are foundational to organizational success in today’s complex networking environments. As cloud computing, IoT and remote work continue to rise, these capabilities will be more important than ever. The future of SD-WAN is one where networks are smarter, more adaptable and ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Forcepoint Secure SD-WAN not only delivers native NGFW security capabilities, but it also provides advanced traffic management by dynamically selecting the best path for traffic based on factors like latency, bandwidth, and application type. It provides application control by identifying and classifying applications in real-time, enabling businesses to enforce policies that prioritize critical apps and optimize network performance while ensuring security.