With the emerging need to connect users to clouds, traditional WAN connectivity using leased lines and MPLS is falling short. Today, the services are everywhere, not just in enterprises’ data centers, but also in public clouds, private clouds and SAAS clouds. Users need the ability to reach the clouds directly, and SD-WAN efficiently provides this bridge.

Traditional SD-WAN solves the issues of WAN connectivity by creating virtual networks, overlays, on top of the current transport network. However, overlay-based SD-WAN comes with one caveat: dependence on tunnels. Although the use of tunnels can make the creation of overlays easier, there are issues.

Read Ray Mota‘s paper, which addresses the pitfalls of tunnels and explains how SD-WAN can be implemented to be completely tunnel free, natively on IP without the use of additional overhead and how businesses can benefit from it : ACG Research Tunnel Free Whitepaper 2020.

For more information listen to 128 Technology: Simplifying Scale through Tunnel-Free Solutions.