Network Communications News (NCN) October 2017 | Page 30

HUGHES SD-WAN LAUNCH
Have it all with Hughes
Dan Thornton, head of solution development at Hughes Europe,
talks to NCN about the company’s new SD-WAN solution.
H
ughes Europe, part
of Hughes Network
Systems, LLC
(Hughes), global
provider of managed
network services, has announced
availability across Europe of the
Hughes Software Defined Wide
Area Network (SD-WAN) service for
the distributed enterprise, joining
its suite of HughesON managed
services for multi-site organisations.
The company says its
service has been developed to
enable digital transformation and
overcome many of the current
network challenges faced by
legacy private networks. Hughes
is looking to deliver something
new as organisations seek greater
network flexibility, improved
customer experience and greater
operational efficiencies as well
as trying to securely protect
business and customer data. By
providing predictable application
performance across the internet
for cloud enablement, fast delivery
of new services and cost savings
from bandwidth optimisation,
combined with high security at the
edge, the Hughes Managed SD-
WAN service has been designed
to solve these challenges.
Dan says, “As companies move
to the cloud, the network becomes
more and more important. People
used to link into company HQ, this
happens less with more traffic
heading straight onto the cloud.
The IT landscape has changed.”
Dan underlines that systems
have to cope not just with the
apps they are running, but deliver
a fast and positive customer
experience and security too, all
of this is sitting on the internet.
Traditional approaches such as
via DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
can be used, but cannot always
guarantee high quality and Hughes
says it recognised this early. A
tricky problem to solve indeed,
but Hughes says its experience
with satellite comms definitely
30 | October 2017
Dan Thornton of
Hughes Europe
points to the SD-
WAN future
helped, applying some of these
techniques to terrestrial systems.
A key problem, as always, is
delivering improved performance,
without prohibitive cost.
Dan underlines that overheads
are kept manageable with SD-
WAN as existing networks can be
used, also making transition easier
for the end user and for those
installing the up-grade.
Dan says, “Companies can find
out exactly what it is they need,
where they need to be strong
and an SD-WAN system to suit
can be built, it’s not a one size
fits all approach. For resellers,
transition is easier too as SD-WAN
is basically an overlay to what they
provide already. A lot of it is done
with templates, so the technical
knowledge needed to install is not
always as high as you might think.”
Dan also argues that
organisations want to see what
is going on, via a dashboard,
where efficiencies are being
made and so on, but they want
the intelligence to be automatic,
another SD-WAN advantage.
The system is rolling out in
Europe after first being launched
in the US.
Dan explains, “Quite a bit of
the push so far has come from US
companies that have had systems
fitted and have seen the benefit
and are now pushing it out across
the European operation. Ultimately
what its delivering is peace of
mind, protection from poor service
and down time, hugely important
for companies these days.”
System detail
The Hughes Managed SD-
WAN service leverages Hughes
ActiveTechnologies to transform
ordinary broadband connections
into enterprise-grade high
performance WANs, including
support for demanding streaming
applications. Included in the
package is ActivePath which
incorporates algorithms and
techniques that exploit the use of
multiple network paths, ensuring
applications are delivered without
interruption across t he secure
WAN regardless of degradation
on a single path. Also on board
is ActiveQoS which continuously
measures end-to-end capacity
on broadband links, dynamically
updating priority queues and
traffic shapers to maximise each
site’s bandwidth usage. This
results in improved performance
for VoIP and video traffic across
all outlets, especially those with
lower bandwidth service.
The service also includes
ActiveClassifier which
automatically and dynamically
classifies traffic based on flow
behavior, eliminating the time-
consuming process of manually
configuring and maintaining
rules to classify and prioritise
specific applications required
by other SD-WAN products. This
optimisation is particularly critical
for real-time and cloud-based
applications allowing this traffic
to be prioritised over non-time
sensitive data. The service also
offers ActiveCompression which
reduces network congestion and
improves application performance,
especially at bandwidth-
constrained sites.
As well as developing
ActiveTechnologies to provide
performance optimisation of
the WAN network, Hughes has
built the platform on the Fortinet
Enterprise Firewall to provide
protection against security threats
and targeted attacks.
A p a r t i c u l a r st re n g th
i d e nt i f i e d b y t h e m a ker i s the
a b i l i t y to m e et sp e c i f i c b us i n es s
n e e d s w i t h so l u t i o n s f rom
Hu g h e s b a se d o n t h e For ti n et 6 0
se r i e s f i rewa l l p l at fo r m , Meraki ,
Ci sco a n d V i p r i n et .
More information: europe.hughes.
com/solutions/connectivity/sd-wan