As crowd services such as the unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) grow in popularity along with the increase of mobile users it’s important to consider statistics reported in studies such as a recent report in Tech Research Asia that announced that network issues, on average, lead to 71 hours of productivity loss. This surge has required companies such as Cato to pay more attention to reducing WAN latency.
Especially with the commonality of cell phone usage low latency is increasingly important. But using the traditional options of VPN or MPLS, with cloud services isn’t practical to keep WAN latency in check. Because of this, enterprises such as Centrient Pharmaceuticals are utilizing cloud-based SD-WAN providers for their WAN connectivity and WAN optimization needs.
The question remains, why is cloud-based SD-WAN so much more effectively addressing the WAN latency problem? We must understand the problem before answering the question.
What is WAN Latency?
Latency is the time data takes to travel over a network. WAN latency is mainly driven by routing issues, hardware, limitations distance, and network congestion. The performance will worsen as the latency increases.
Voice over IP and videoconferencing applications for real-time conferencing are prone to latency brake performance and productivity. When web page latency is measured in a millisecond, it’s generally not a problem. Performance degradation levels seem to pause around 250-300 milliseconds, or as Phil Edholm explains the same pace as a natural pause in a human voice in a conversation.
If round-trip latency is longer than 250-300 milliseconds call quality degrades, but this is a minimum threshold. Skype for Business requires 100 milliseconds and other UCaaS services demand higher performance levels.
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Why Legacy WAN Solutions Falter
VPN, MPLS, and appliance-based Do-It-Yourself (DIY) SD-WAN are the three main options for WAN connectivity other than cloud-based SD-WAN. These three traditional choices falter when attempting to solve the WAN latency problem for a number of reasons.
Neither VPN nor DIY SD-WAN solutions offer private network backbone options and public internet isn’t reliable enough for WAN backbone. WAN latency is a middle of the road approach to this issue. At first glance, it may seem MPLS solves the latency issue because it offers a low-latency backbone and eliminates the need for public internet. But MPLS is challenging for enterprises because of its expense as well as the inefficient way it meets the demands of cloud and mobile.
MPLS costs increase further as a company’s demands for bandwidth also increase making this choice even more prohibitive. Additionally, MPLS is not agile since it was created to send data between a few static locations. With WAN’s increased demand for mobility cloud and mobile solutions are now normal applications.
Wan Latency is Solved with Cloud-Based SD-WAN Solutions
The ideal WAN latency solution is private, affordable, intelligent, global WAN backed, SLA-backed, agile routing, mobile-optimized, with cloud connectivity. Cato’s cloud-based SD-WAN solution meets all of these needs as well as affordable WAN cloud connectivity.
Cato’s customers don’t rely on the public internet. They have access to Cato’s private backbone with 45 Points of Presence globally. This allows Cato to bypass congestion and latency commonly found on the public internet core.
Wan latency is further reduced when end-to-end optimization and path selection for WAN and cloud traffic complement the cost and service benefits of a private backbone. Cato PoPs monitor the network for packet loss, latency, jitter, routine packets across the optimum path. Additionally, the PoPs collocate in the datacenters with IXPs, the leading cloud providers, such as AWS.
WAN Latency Benefits of Cato Cloud
Understanding why cloud-based SD-WAN provides the ideal approach to WAN latency is important, but ultimately, proving the benefits is most important and that is where Cato customers are helpful.
Matthew Cijsouw, Global IT Manager at Centrient Pharmaceuticals switched to the Cato Cloud from MPLS and states “The voice quality of Skype for Business over Cato Cloud has been about the same as with MPLS but, of course, at a fraction of the cost. In fact, if we measure it, the packet loss and latency figures appear to be even better.”
Similar tests between Virginia and Singapore proved Cato’s ability to reduce latency by ten percent which is the difference between an incomprehensible and productive VoIP call.
Cato solves WAN Latency for the Modern Enterprise
Today’s mobile business cannot depend on the public internet. The options aren’t reliable enough. WAN latency challenges are uniquely addressed by cloud-based SD-WAN rather than MPLS which is neither agile or cost-effective.
Cato Cloud can enhance reliability and performance while reducing WAN latency and saving your company money. If you would like to learn more about Cato’s private backbone and how they can use this to modernize your WAN contact them today.
