Hi
@businessuserIt's important to begin with the difference between WAN and Internet.
Wide Area Networks connect LANs over wide areas. The technology and service delivery used to make these connections is usually quite different to that of the LAN. Wikipedia describes
WAN like this:
"
A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.[1]
Businesses, as well as schools and government entities, use wide area networks to relay data to staff, students, clients, buyers and suppliers from various locations around the world. In essence, this mode of telecommunication allows a business to effectively carry out its daily function regardless of location."
It then states "The Internet may be considered a WAN.[2]" In fact it is common to see on network diagrams the area outside the LAN is defined as the WAN, or a router with ports labelled distinctively LAN and WAN.
Many organisations will lease telecommunications services which are effectively private to the organisation in order to interlink sites across cities, countries and around the world. These leased services may offer guaranteed bandwidth and can cost a lot of money. Commonly they offer a level of privacy also, as the WAN circuits may only provide a link between the organisations locations and not to the public Internet. So there are many WANs that are distinctly separate from the Internet.
Some people prefer to distinguish the Internet from a WAN in diagrams or terminology because of this fact that many WANs are private and when used in this private way are distinctly different the Internet. If you like could be consider the Internet more of a "public" WAN.
Also be mindful of the distinction between a LAN from the WAN. LANs commonly use Ethernet and Wi-Fi to connect devices which are close by. WANs commonly use different networking technology such as MPLS, ATM and Frame Relay for much longer distance communication.
SDWAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) is a WAN which utilises software to manipulate or augment the WAN in some beneficial way. A very common use case for SDWAN would be to mimic the private connectivity a private WAN provides by letting software build secure tunnels across the public Internet. The "Software Defined" aspect here helps the network establish secure and private connectivity, route traffic appropriately between the LANs which are being interconnected and in some cases manipulate or create efficiencies in the path of the traffic (possibly by compressing the traffic, or duplicating it across multiple WAN links). This in many cases may remove the need entirely for expensive leased line private WAN services.
Many businesses who use Aruba's SDWAN have a private WAN as well as an Internet connection at each site. The SDWAN solution builds paths between the sites on both of these WAN links (private WAN + Internet) which creates redundancy for the traffic path and allows the SDWAN solution to make clever decisions about which path certain applications should take. For example there might be a preference to have Voice over IP traffic take a less latent path between sites on the private WAN while sending Intranet services across the cheaper, higher bandwidth Internet link.
SDWAN provides flexibility in the way sites interconnect and in many cases removes the requirement for private, expensive WAN links at all.
In the case of Aruba's Edge Connect SD-Branch management and orchestration of the solution takes place in Aruba Central.
Aruba Central is a cloud service which provides network management and monitoring for Wi-Fi, Wired and SDWANs. It plays a part in orchestrating, configuring and long term monitoring of an SDWAN but the WAN network itself is more made up of hardware appliances at each of the sites.
This YouTube video might be of value:
Aruba SD Branch Solution Overview.
Hope this helps your understanding and learning journey.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 19, 2023 09:43 PM
From: businessuser
Subject: What is the difference SD WAN and cloud controller
I understand that aruba central is used for controlling SDWAN and AP.
Okay let me start with something more basic.
What is the difference between WAN, SDWAN and internet?
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 19, 2023 04:46 PM
From: ariyap
Subject: What is the difference SD WAN and cloud controller
Aruba Central is the orchestrator for Aruba gateways (formally known as Aruba controllers)
Aruba Gateways run a firmware that not only can do the classic anchoring of Aruba AP tunnels but also all the SD-WAN functionality
Check this overview
https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/central/latest/content/aos10x/overview/architecture-overview-aos10.htm
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Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of HPE or Aruba.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 19, 2023 06:12 AM
From: businessuser
Subject: What is the difference SD WAN and cloud controller
I cant tell the difference between the two.
SD-WAN is software developed wide area network so doesnt it mean that we are using software to control the internet?
So isnt it the same as cloud controller (like aruba central)?
But my colleague tell me cloud is not SD WAN.
So what is the difference between aruba central and SD WAN?