Comcast Business, Versa Drive SD-WAN Innovation

Comcast Business unveiled enhancements to its software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) solution on the ActiveCore SDN Platform that enables distributed workforces to bring new levels of intelligence to the network.

The feature is made possible through Comcast Business’ partnership with Versa Networks and harnesses the power of application-level recognition and applies it to context-driven SD-WAN traffic prioritization.

As employers and their IT departments extend office infrastructure to remote locations, they increasingly rely on technologies like SD-WAN to manage the prioritization, quality of experience and security of application traffic.

At the same time, businesses are grappling with how to effectively route the increased traffic on their networks. In the past, IT managers had to tag digital content (i.e. videos and emails) manually to ensure proper prioritization; implementing numerous static rules to direct the right traffic over the right path.

“Organizations had to adapt quickly when faced with the sudden shift to a distributed and remote workforce last year. These changes drastically transformed the way businesses interact, collaborate and communicate. As a result, IT departments have continued to be tasked with meeting evolving security, access and bandwidth challenges brought on by the need to support a hybrid workforce model,” said Jeff Lewis, VP, ActiveCore Product and Operations, Comcast Business. “Our latest SD-WAN enhancement is another example of how Comcast Business is continuing to innovate on the ActiveCore SDN Platform to help our customers succeed in today’s increasingly distributed world.”

This feature leverages proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to optimize SD-WAN traffic based on application priority and the real-time status of the network connections. The capability uses a real-time calculation to determine the best performing path per session between a content source and its destination. It looks at all available options and dynamically determines the optimal path at any point in time for traffic for an optimal user experience possible. Customers can better support business-critical applications and:

  • Increase the usefulness of backup links with application-level, granular policy control
  • Increase uptime and create a smarter network through proactive mitigation strategies
  • Improve the quality of experience by prioritizing critical applications such as real-time voice and video