What Is Cisco SDWAN ~ Video 2.
This video covers the evolution of the WAN over the years, from the technologies of the past up to present and where we are headed in the future. Complete video series: http://cs.co/sdwan-video
What is Cisco IWAN, and where did it go?
The buzz word of the year, SD-WAN. At the end of 2015, Cisco identified four pillars that make up SD-WAN:
- Transport-independent design
- Intelligent path control (performance based routing)
- Application optimization (application prioritization)
- Secure connectivity (encryption)
The goal of SD-WAN was to stay competitive in the quickly expanding market of performance routing. While this was not a new idea, the deployment and go to market strategy allowed SD-WAN to be sold to the masses.
When Cisco pioneered SD-WAN and launch IWAN in May 2016, they tried bolting existing router services together, including DMVPN and WAAS, and labeling it IWAN. This was a feature set available on many Cisco routers from the 800 series through to the newer ISR 4000 series. The caveat being, only the 4000 series had the full capabilities of IWAN. It was a good first attempt, leveraging strengths from their world-renowned routers and allowing the adoption from their existing customer base. Or at least those who forked over the money for the new 4000 series with required licenses were under that impression.
Cisco failed to implement a central management for IWAN and instead tried to engineer an easier way to deploy the solution. Unfortunately, even with the updates to IWAN, it still required someone with an understanding of Cisco CLI to deploy the solution. The Cisco CLI is the command line interface, where an engineer would configure the Cisco routers and setup IWAN. Not exactly what you expect in an SD-WAN environment with no ease of deployment, the key benefit famously touted by the other SD-WAN solution providers.
Read more at https://blog.tbicom.com/the-evolution-of-cisco-sdwan