Underlay Episode 42: SD-WAN Beyond the Hype
My first Network Collective appearance. Jordan Martin and Eyvonne Sharp wanted engineers who had designed, implemented and operated SD-WAN for real, now that the dust was settling in early 2019. Jedadiah Casey and I obliged.
9 January 2019 · 1 min read
Network Collective's Underlay podcast, Episode 42. Published 9 January 2019. Co-hosts: Jordan Martin and Eyvonne Sharp. Guests: Jedadiah Casey and me.
Jordan and Eyvonne's premise: software-defined WAN was one of the most hyped technologies in recent memory, with no claim off limits, from cost savings to unprecedented simplicity. Now that it was 2019 and some of the dust was settling, they wanted a conversation with engineers who had been in the thick of it and knew what it was really like to design, implement and operate one. Jedadiah Casey brought the enterprise operator's view and I brought three years of deploying it for customers as a managed provider.
What we covered
What the technology actually did once it hit production networks, versus what the slide decks promised. The design decisions that matter before the boxes arrive, and the operational realities afterward. Where the simplicity claims were true and where they hid complexity somewhere else. And the honest version of the cost conversation, which I had already learned to have early with every prospect: it usually does not save money, and it is still usually worth it.
