Enterprise

SD-WAN over FTTP: take your networking further

Zen Jan 15 2024

You’ve probably heard about the benefits of SD-WAN – from flexibility of setup and management to its inherent intelligence and scalability. Whether you’re complementing an existing MPLS WAN or going all-in, it truly is a networking solution built for 21^st century business.

In this blog, we'll be examining one of those perceived advantages in a little more detail. The fact that SD-WAN is platform agnostic means it can operate over any transport medium, and with the accelerating growth of FTTP – to homes and businesses alike – many people are seeing the pairing of these two technologies as a perfect match.

Here are seven reasons why you may (or may not) benefit from SD-WAN over FTTP.

1) Price

Let’s start with one of the biggest reasons to consider FTTP instead of traditional leased lines as your SD-WAN platform of choice.

SD-WAN over FTTP offers a high bandwidth fibre connection at a lower cost than traditional IP VPN products. With reduced transport and network costs, when you’re expanding your network (or building it from scratch), this is definitely a compelling reason.

2) Reliability

Despite its price advantages over Ethernet, FTTP is inherently more reliable than older forms of broadband. In fact, for many businesses it could actually provide all the reliability they need.

What’s more, because SD-WAN is so flexible, you can easily combine your service with a failover circuit (like 4G or 5G) for extremely high levels of availability.

Great performance and great reliability at a significantly reduced cost… it seems like the benefits of SD-WAN over FTTP are beginning to stack up.

3) Ease and speed of installation

There’s no escaping the fact that Ethernet often means long lead times and digging. It’s certainly worth it when your connection’s set up, but the process isn’t always quick or straightforward.

Compare that to a full fibre connection that – depending on whether the cables have already been laid in your area – can be switched on just as simply as any other broadband connection.

The importance of a quick and easy turnaround shouldn’t be underestimated. Rolling out your network in days instead of weeks (or months) is a powerful reason to consider FTTP.

4) Flexibility

If you’re operating a ‘traditional’, static business network you may, for example, be connecting a limited number of fixed sites. You may be satisfied with your network topology, with little or no need to consider change.

But that's not always the case.

If you have remote or hybrid workers, SD-WAN enables you to keep them on the same corporate network, just like they’re inside your office. The ability to roll out fast, reliable connections (or even use existing ones) to your remote workers means you can expand your corporate network wherever (and whenever) it’s needed.

Or perhaps you’re connecting smaller and remote sites, locations that it would be too costly or impractical to connect via leased lines. Again, using cheaper and more abundant (but often just as good) broadband connections makes that task a whole lot easier.

The point is, it’s simply much more straightforward, cheaper and more practical to use high performance broadband connections for these (and many other) use cases.

We can see that SD-WAN over FTTP brings a number of advantages. But before you jump straight in, it’s worth examining some of the ongoing benefits of traditional IP VPN connections.

5) SLAs and repair times

Without backtracking at all on the exceptional reliability of FTTP, your business may still require the absolute guarantees that only a leased line can provide.

You won’t get those 99.9% availability SLAs or guaranteed repair times from FTTP (which is likely to be subject to standard broadband repair times).

So it’s probably worth asking yourself the question, is ‘very reliable’ reliable enough? The answer to that will depend on your own unique tolerance to downtime.

6) A dedicated connection?

You probably already know this of course, but a leased line is yours and yours alone. You won’t get that with FTTP – which means it’ll be subject to possible contention and congestion, particularly at the busiest times of day.

That may not be of concern to your business, but then again it might.

7) A symmetrical connection

Usually, FTTP connections aren’t symmetrical. We say ‘usually’, because symmetrical FTTP connections are in fact available.

But if uploads are just as if not more important to your business, the asymmetry of your broadband connection might be problematic.

The good news is that, even if those last three points apply to you, this needn’t rule out SD-WAN over FTTP for your business.

That’s because this doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. Where traditional network infrastructure makes sense (connecting your main offices for example), you can still use it, while still being able to use a different underlay technology (i.e. FTTP) for remote and flexible locations. Then again, you may be ‘all in’ on the benefits of SD-WAN over FTTP. Whether you’re happier to maintain a traditional MPLS setup, you’d prefer to follow the ‘mixed’ route or you’ve decided that the future of networking is full fibre, there’s a solution that’s right for you.