My daughter chose our family vacation spot this year. Having recently graduated from High School, her choice was Hawaii and we were all booked. You know, the Big Island where the volcano has been erupting since May?
The volcano finally started to settle down, but there were a few other obstacles in our way as we journeyed to Hawaii. Hurricane Hugo was coming. Scheduled to arrive the day before we got to the Big Island. Luckily it stayed far enough south. And, thankfully, we were able to fly home a few days before Hurricane Lane hit.
But, the flight to Hawaii was a bit of an experience. We had a connecting flight in San Francisco. About 45 minutes in to the flight, the pilot came on to say they lost control and were not able to enter the Pacific. However, the plane was too heavy to land, so they had to circle and burn off the fuel. A few announcements and nearly two hours later, we were empty enough to land back in San Francisco. I spent the time contacting and rearranging our 3rd flight from Big Island to Oahu where we were to meet up with our son who flew separately. That was a bit challenging since we didn’t have any solid details yet.
The crew had to be changed out and the plane had to get reloaded and refueled. But, we finally got to board…and then sat as we waited for cutlery to be brought on for the first class “so they didn’t have to eat with their fingers”, yep…that was actually said!
Plenty of time in an airport to think about our September Lunch presentation on SD – WAN. Ironic how it tied in to our travel experience at the time. How is that possible you ask?
Wikipedia defines “SD – WAN as an acronym for software-defined networking in a wide area network (WAN). An SD-WAN simplifies the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling the networking hardware from its control mechanism.”
It goes on to say, “A key application of an SD-WAN is to allow companies to build higher-performance WANs using lower-cost and commercially available Internet Access, enabling businesses to partially replace more expensive private WAN Connection technologies.”
I had booked one of the lowest cost fares that I could to get us to Hawaii. However, this meant being creative taking two connecting flights to get to our final destination. What I didn’t do was book it through a travel agency like Bursch Travel, who could have helped me maximize my options and minimize my time and costs overall. Bursch Travel would have been like our SD – WAN carrier who helps to find the easiest paths for all of our traffic and gets a business all set-up with the network.
Our plane needed to communicate with the controller in order to gain access (permissions) to cross into the Pacific. This controller is like the SD – WAN appliance that will allow a business to share two Internet connections and through the use of software allows traffic to communicate down both connection paths.
Sometimes we are circling the air, not knowing which direction is the best to go. We find ourselves burning fuel and watching other resources getting used up. It takes longer to get to the destination. This is like having slow or unreliable internet connections that may have met your needs even a year ago, but as IoT has become so abundant, and more applications are in the cloud, our needs change on how much bandwidth we need to stay connected. The team at InteleCONNECT would love to be your pilot to help you navigate through your needs and find the best options for your business. It may be an SD – WAN application and it may simply be the current set-up you already have.
SD – WAN is a newer technology that is typically thought of for larger enterprise businesses. But, it can be appropriate for smaller businesses too. SD-WAN can be a wonderful solution for businesses with multiple locations.
Here is a white paper about SD-WAN from Consolidated – CLICK HERE
Check out this explainer video.
