How ThousandEyes integration improves SD-WAN performance

If you’re looking to get more performance and functionality from your SD-WAN, you may have looked at a range of solutions. Any potential upgrade should include the consideration of a digital experience monitoring (DEM) tool. Integration with one such tool – ThousandEyes – can drastically improve SD-WAN performance. Unsure how one DEM can make such a difference? We’ll break it down.

What is SD-WAN

Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is a transformative technology that simplifies the IT infrastructure control and management by delivering a virtual WAN architecture that securely connects users to their applications. It’s cheaper and more agile than traditional methods of connectivity. And it’s better suited to our modern, more remote workplaces. But, as a result, SD-WAN installations are highly complex with a web of interdependencies, unlike traditional LAN or other on-premises configurations.

Why are modern deployments different?

In the years gone by, users were in offices and all apps lived in on-premises data centres. The WAN (wide area network) was what connected all of them. Today, with the adoption of SaaS apps and associated dependencies such as cloud services and third-party API endpoints, the WAN is getting stretched beyond recognition. In its place, the internet is directly and exclusively carrying a large share of all enterprise traffic flows. Where before you may have had 12 branches in a few regional locations, today it’s not uncommon to see 2,000 branches made up of single remote employees. That configuration requires a web of robust support to ensure smart routing and peak performance across the network.

How can ThousandEyes help

With so many more connections, efficient monitoring and troubleshooting are vital. A digital experience monitoring tool (DEM) like ThousandEyes can:

• Provide one, centralised agent for routing traffic via the SD-WAN overlay and the network underlay via DIA.
• Combine network underlay and overlay monitoring with end-to-end application and SaaS performance tracking for the critical business insights needed to fix problems and make improvements to the infrastructure.
• Bring monitoring of the application and the host together for a better overall user and vendor experience.
• Mix your on-site SD-WAN with cloud SD-WAN deployment monitoring for a single-user experience view.

Not surprisingly, Cisco says it best; “ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents can now run natively on those eligible Cisco routers with IOS XE network software stack (17.6.1) as a container application. That means there is no need for extra compute resources at each branch site for ThousandEyes; eliminating the need for IT expertise at the branch level as well as reducing OpEx and CapEx to install and manage any additional resources. An additional leap in productivity results from the ability for Cisco vManage to orchestrate the deployment and initial provisioning of ThousandEyes agents across all the SD-WAN branch routers anywhere in the world from a centralized console.”

Before you make any deployments, it’s best to conduct a readiness assessment and pilot testing programme. Not sure how to do that? We’re happy to help.