July 6, 2023
In the world of network infrastructure, SD-WAN or Software-Defined Wide Area Networking and Firewalls are the two vital elements playing pivotal roles in ensuring the security and performance of business networks. Although both of them serve vital functions, there is a how does SD-WAN work differently from firewalls in terms of their capabilities and approaches.
SD-WAN is groundbreaking technology bringing greater agility, flexibility, and optimization to network management, while firewalls have been the cornerstone of network security.
Knowing about the difference between SD-WAN and firewalls is vital for companies in search of building efficient and robust networks that withstand the challenges faced by the digital era.
In our post today, we will explore the main features and the perks of SD-WAN and firewalls that highlight their respective strengths and areas of expertise. We will look into how SD-WAN can help address the shortcomings of traditional firewalls and why it is emerging as the superior choice for companies searching to optimize their network infrastructures.
By knowing about the capabilities and roles of SD-WAN and firewalls, businesses can make sound decisions while designing and implementing their network architectures, ensuring the security and performance that are addressed effectively.
We will dive deeper into the realm of SD-WAN and firewalls to uncover the ideal practices for building strong and efficient networks in the rapidly evolving digital sphere and the reason why managed SD-WAN from Metro Wireless outshines firewalls across the contemporary networking landscapes.
So, how does SD-WAN work? SD-WAN typically represents the paradigm shift across network management by leveraging the software-defined principles to dynamically route the network traffic based on real-time conditions and the requirements for application. It allows companies to optimize traffic flow, enhance application performances, and seamlessly integrate diverse network connections for enhanced connectivity.
On the contrary, firewalls aim mainly at network security, inspecting and filtering the traffic to safeguard against unauthorized accesses, malware, and other threats. Firewalls can help establish and secure the perimeters acting as a gatekeeper between reliable internal networks and the external world.
While firewalls are undeniably important for network security, they come with limitations considering the optimization of the network performances and adapting to the evolving requirements of the network. SD-WAN can bridge the gaps by offering companies holistic approaches combining efficiencies, security, and scalability.
Incorporating wise traffic routing, awareness of the applications, and centralized management can help SD-WAN to work differently from firewall revolutionizing the network management, allowing companies to achieve secure, high-performance connectivity aligning to the requirements of the businesses.
Firewalls were designed to create a barrier between your internal network and the outside world. They are a vital element of the network of modern business infrastructure. Over the past two decades, firewalls have evolved to stay up with the pace of complex threats and sophisticated attacks.
The enhancements include intrusion prevention and NGFW or Next Generation Firewalls features. These innovations have resulted in the highly specialized appliances best for inspecting massive amounts of data, detecting the latest malware and ransomware threats, and alerting against potential DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks, aiding businesses in meeting the new and stringent complaint needs.
Managed SD-WAN solutions were built to connect businesses to the outside world. More business applications are moving to the Cloud, where businesses require guaranteeing and optimizing access to the Internet.
The solutions use features like automatic failback and failover, QoS or Quality of Service, performance metrics and alerts, load balancing, and Software Defined Wide Area Networking or SD-WAN, optimizing the performance of the connections and eliminating outages.
Let us now check out a few of the essential differences between managed SD-WAN versus firewall.
Managed SD-WAN offers businesses unmatched agility and greater flexibility in network management. SD-WAN leverages software-defined networking for optimizing and streamlining the network traffic, unlike firewalls that mainly aim at perimeter security.
Companies can dynamically route the traffic based on real-time connections, like bandwidth availability and network congestion with SD-WAN. The ability ensures that the vital applications gain emphasis, leading to enhanced performances and less latency.
Furthermore, managed SD-WAN offers built-in support across several connections, including the MPLS, cellular, and broadband networks. The greater flexibility allows businesses to use cost-effective internet links while maintaining secured connectivity. Alternatively, firewalls are mainly designed to secure individual network parts and cannot manage the diversity in the types of connections.
Although firewalls are a vital security component, managed SD-WAN goes beyond just the fundamentals of perimeter protections offering an enhanced security measure for the evolving threat in today's landscape.
The managed SD-WAN incorporates built-in security features like encryption, advanced threat detection, and authentication, securing the traffic across the application levels. The approach ensures cutting-edge security across the whole network, including branch offices, cloud environments, and data centers.
Furthermore, managed SD-WAN Solutions include integrated security services like intrusion prevention systems, secure web gateways, and prevention tools for data loss. These extensive security abilities offer their businesses a unified approach to network protection, removing the requirement for distinctive security appliances or challenging configurations.
While firewalls effectively protect individual segments, they remain unmatched by the holistic security feature offered by the well-managed SD-WAN.
One of the main perks of managed SD-WAN is its centralized management capabilities and scalability. As businesses develop, open new branches, or adopt cloud-based applications, the network should instantly adapt to these supporting changes.
SD-WAN allows for seamless scalability, enabling companies to add or remove network resources easily. The centralized management console offered by managed SD-WAN empowers the IT administrators to control the network policies efficiently, monitor performance, and implement the changes across the whole network through a single interface.
On the other hand, firewalls would need manual configuration for every device or location, leading to greater complexities and time-consuming management of tasks. The lack of centralized control would hamper scalability leading to inconsistencies across the network security policies, making it tougher to maintain uniform security measures across various network segments.
The managed SD-WAN delivers affordability compared to conventional firewalls. Companies can reduce their dependence on costlier MPLS lines by leveraging low-cost and private internet connections. Optimized costs help businesses to redirect their IT budgets to other vital initiatives.
The SD-WAN managed services also simplify the network's operations by consolidating several network functions into a single platform. The integrated security services, load balancing, traffic shaping, and WAN optimization removes the requirement for distinctive appliances, reducing operational and hardware costs.
Although important for perimeter security, firewalls need additional security appliances to address the growing threats resulting in higher maintenance and upfront costs.
Managed SD-WAN offers robust hot failover and higher availability mechanisms, ensuring businesses' uninterrupted connectivity and continuity. Hot failover mainly indicates the automatic and seamless switchover to the backup connection or the device during a network failure.
Businesses can establish redundant connections like multiple internet links or diverse carriers, constantly ensuring the network's availability. During the failure of the primary link, the SD-WAN solution can instantly and automatically reroute the traffic to the backup link reducing the downtime and maintaining seamless connectivity.
Although firewalls are important for network security, generally, they do not offer built-in failover abilities. In the firewall-based setup, network administrators must manually configure and manage the failover mechanisms that are time-consuming and prone to errors.
Managed SD-WAN simplifies the process by offering automated failover abilities, reducing the risk of human flaws, and ensuring higher availability without compromising security.
Managed SD-WAN goes beyond the fundamental packet filtering by offering the most intelligent traffic steering abilities. Through deep packet inspection and application-based routing, SD-WAN solutions can identify and emphasize the important traffic flow based on the business's distinctive requirements.
Dynamic traffic management can ensure mission-based applications like video conferencing or VoIP conferencing receive the required bandwidth and low latency for the best performances.
Although firewalls are vital for network security cannot effectively manage and emphasize the traffic based on the requirement of applications. They aim to enforce security policies and might not require visibility into the application-level performances.
Managed SD-WAN offers better granular control over the flow of traffic that enables businesses to optimize the network resources and enhance the overall user experience.
Managed SD-WAN incorporates advanced QoS or Quality of Service abilities enabling businesses to emphasize network traffic based on distinctive criteria. QoS ensures that the vital applications receive the required bandwidth and network resources, reduces the impact of bandwidth-intensive applications, and guarantees consistent performance on the different network traffic.
SD-WAN enhances network efficiencies and user experience by intelligently optimizing and managing bandwidth use.
Firewalls, although essential for network security, it lacks granular control over bandwidth allocation and QoS management. They mainly aim to enforce security policies and might need mechanisms to emphasize or optimize the network traffic based on the application requirements.
The QoS capabilities of managed SD-WAN ensure that business-critical applications like VoIP or real-time video conferencing get the required network resources that enhance user satisfaction and performance.
Managed SD-WAN solutions offer centralized reporting and visibility features offering the network administrators greater insights into the network performance, security incidents, and application use.
The administrator can actively monitor the network traffic, track the application performances, and generate detailed reports for decision-making and analysis through the centralized management console. The centralized visibility can simplify network monitoring, capacity planning, and troubleshooting.
The firewalls often need a similar level of centralized visibility and reporting abilities. The network administrations often depend on distinctive monitoring tools or manually collect and analyze logs through the varied firewall devices.
The centralized management and reporting for managed SD-WAN offers a holistic view of the network, making it easier to identify the issues, optimize the performances and make informed decisions to ensure the network's efficiency.
Managed SD-WAN solutions are designed for rapid deployment and simplified maintenance, reducing the effort and time needed to establish and manage the network infrastructure. SD-WAN devices can get preconfigured and shipped to the branch locations allowing quick and hassle-free deployment.
Furthermore, centralized management consoles enable policy updates, remote configurations, and firmware upgrades while streamlining the ongoing maintenance tasks.
Firewalls often include challenging maintenance and deployment processes. Every firewall device might need a manual configuration that is often time-consuming, mainly for companies with several branch offices or distributed network architecture.
The simplified deployment and centralized management of the managed SD-WAN for reducing the burden on IT teams, enabling them to aim at strategic initiatives instead of spending a huge amount of time on network maintenance.
With the continued evolution of the demands on network infrastructures, companies need to embrace solutions that keep pace with the changing landscapes. The managed SD-WAN represents the game-changing approach surpassing the abilities of traditional firewalls, offering unmatched scalability, agility, and security.
Adopting managed SD-WAN can help businesses optimize their network performances, boosting the application delivery and simplifying the management, ensuring strong security measures are in order.
Are you prepared to take your new networks to the next level by understanding the difference between SD-WAN and firewall? It is the best time to consider the premier abilities of managed SD-WAN over traditional firewalls. You can now empower your business with the network infrastructure offering dynamic traffic management, extensive security, centralized control, and seamless scalability.
Connect to industry-leading managed service providers like Metro Wireless to explore the various possibilities of managed SD-WAN to discover how it can revolutionize network operations.
Contact us today to embark on the journey toward the best network infrastructure that aids your business's success and growth. There are endless possibilities with SD-WAN at your aid.
Tyler Hoffman
