Enhancing the Security Fabric
Fortigate SD-WAN
Fortinet’s Fortigate-based Secure SD-WAN solution provides next-generation security and networking capabilities to improve WAN efficiency without compromising security.
The adoption of cloud services, accelerating the progress in WAN technologies, makes the next generation security strategies of the mobile workforce critical with multi-path WAN.
Especially in distributed organizations, load-balancing between multiple WAN lines (for example, active / active use of two ADSL lines at the same time). Checking the status of each WAN line and directing all traffic to the other WAN line in case the line slows down becomes very valuable issues.
An SD-WAN solution connects users to any application wherever it resides from the data center to the cloud. SD-WAN intelligently determines which path best meets the ideal performance needs for a specific application. It then routes the traffic through to the ideal WAN path, whereas traditional WAN architectures only have the ability to route all applications through MPLS. Below are a few characteristics that define how an SD-WAN solution works and has evolved from a WAN infrastructure:
Application Awareness
With traditional WAN solutions, organizations suffer a less than ideal quality of experience and have a hard time delivering high-performance bandwidth for critical applications. Since legacy WAN architectures rely on packet routing, they lack in-depth application visibility. SD-WAN solutions, however, intelligently identify applications on the very first packet of data traffic. Network teams gain the visibility they need about which applications are used most widely across the organization, which helps them make smarter, more well-informed decisions and policies.
Dynamic Path Selection
SD-WAN solutions enable dynamic path selection for traffic to flow through: an MPLS connection, a broadband connection, and LTE. The SD-WAN solution can intelligently identify applications and determine the best path it should take to maximize functionality. Moreover, self-healing capabilities automatically route traffic to the next best available link in the event of an outage of the primary link. Not only does this automated capability reduce complexity within the network, but it also delivers an improved user experience and improves the performance of applications.
Zero-Touch Deployment
SD-WAN solutions provide control and data plane separation to ensure centralized management and orchestration. SD-WAN enables faster deployments with zero-touch provisioning capabilities while doing it at scale. In addition, a unified management console for both network and security operations helps to simplify operations at the WAN edge.
Centralized Orchestration
Fortinet Secure SD-WAN Orchestrator allows organizations to simplify centralized deployment and establish automation to save time and respond more quickly to business demands. A centralized orchestrator can provide an intuitive workflow for business policies to strategize distribution of applications, and other traffic across and between branch offices. With Automated VPN overlay bring-up, meshed connectivity across regional hubs and branch offices especially in larger SD-WAN deployments is easily managed with minimal overhead. Enhanced analytics for WAN link availability, performance SLAs and application traffic in runtime, and historical stats allow the infrastructure team to troubleshoot and quickly resolve network issues.
