Viptela Looks to Modernize the WAN

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In the age of the cloud, IT organizations are more dependent on wide area networks (WANs) than ever. The problem is that while WAN bandwidth remains relatively constrained, the number of applications looking to share data across the links has increased exponentially.

Coming out of stealth mode this week is a new startup company that developed a router and controller that provide an overlay over WAN connections to allow IT organizations to more effectively use and secure the available bandwidth than they could by applying traditional WAN optimization techniques.

Viptela CEO Amir Khan says the Viptela Secure Extensible Network (SEN) segments WAN traffic in a way that not only provides higher levels of security by isolating application traffic on the network, it also creates an overlay that enables network traffic to be more efficiently routed between applications over multiple WAN connections.

Beyond giving IT organizations more control over the WAN, Khan says one of the major benefits of the Viptela SEN router and controller is that it allows IT organizations to encrypt and segment network traffic across a secure network fabric that extends across multiple WANs. The end result is a network architecture that gives IT organizations more granular control over how applications using, for example, real-time voice and video, are secured and managed across the WAN.

To manage all that, Viptela also unveiled a vManage Network Management System, which is a virtual appliance used to configure, manage and monitor the Viptela SEN router and controller.

Change generally comes slowly to networking infrastructure. But given the extensive use of the cloud these days, WANs are in need of the same level of modernization that is being applied to local area networks. In fact, it’s arguable that when it comes to applying that modernization, the WAN might actually be the bigger priority.