Introduction to SD-WAN
SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network architecture that enables organizations to modernize their traditional WAN networks to meet the growing needs of digital evolution. With SD-WAN solutions, organizations gain high-performance networking capabilities that support digital transformation (DX) initiatives to simplify operations which enhance business agility.
Client’s Infrastructure
The customer is a retail enterprise with more than 90 stores and warehouses across India. In each of their stores and warehouses, Fortigate Firewall has been implemented as the gateway appliance. The networks consist of complex Wired and Wireless Infrastructure.
Problems associated without SD-WAN
- In the presence of latency or Packet Drops, the active VPN & WAN links do not switch over to the other redundant respective VPN & WAN link.
- The redundant link will be active but will remain unused always.
- There is no load-balancing for VPN & WAN links.
- Approximately 2 lakh Radius client authentication request timeouts are observed.
Fortigate SD-WAN Architecture
The SD-WAN technology was implemented in the existing Fortigate firewall appliances using Forti-manager residing in all warehouses. With the implementation of FORTIGATE SD-WAN architecture, the above-mentioned problems were resolved.
Fortigate SD-WAN Advantages
- Problem of Load-balancing was solved
- Both the WAN & VPN links are effectively being used.
- Packet drops and Latency were reduced with the combined architecture of both the WAN & VPN l
- The number of authentication request timeouts against RADIUS Server have drastically reduced to 7,000.
- Improved Network efficiency
Solution Design Benefits
As the client has a huge and complicated infrastructure in India, it is a tedious task to maintain all Fortigate gateways throughout all locations centrally.
By introducing Fortigate SD-WAN infrastructure through Fortimanager, administrators have full visibility of all Gateway Fortigate Firewalls. One can easily access, standardize, configure, and maintain the complete configurations centrally through one console using Forti-Manager application. Apart from managing the Gateways centrally, SD-WAN configurations also increases the WAN, VPN link efficiency through load balancing and SD-WAN Performance Rules.
