transforming the enterprise networking market,” said the research firm. This shift is particularly notable when considering that configurations of enterprise networks typically don’t change very quickly. Contract lengths can be long, as can the time it takes to go from RFP to installed network, TeleGeography analysts pointed out, “but our time series clearly indicates that WAN configurations are undergoing a shift.” Much the same can be seen when looking at where bandwidth is being deployed. “With the evolution of SD-WAN, WAN managers have begun to shrink port sizes for MPLS while increasing DIA and business broadband bandwidths,” said TeleGeography analysts. “Altering these port sizes often lowers the total cost of ownership.” In 2022, for example, MPLS usage peaked at 11 to 50 Mbps with 27 percent of enterprise WAN sites falling in that range, show TeleGeography figures. DIA was a more common product in the top four bandwidth ranges, peaking at 31 percent for the 51 to 100 Mbps range, while business broadband also peaked at 29 percent in the 51 to 100 Mbps range. Meanwhile, DIA saw increases in all port sizes above 50 Mbps, with the largest increase of 12 points in the 51 to 100 Mbps range. Business broadband increased 10 points in the 51 to 100 Mbps range during the past four years, while MPLS say that percentage drop by about 5 points. Indeed, it’s enough of a transformation to expect some direct impacts in the way business connectivity is bought and sold. After all, while SD-WAN’s traffic-shaping capabilities allow for the trade-in of moreexpensive and stable MPLS links for more-agile and cheaper – but often less-reliable – local loops, those lines still must deliver on the promises of smart, fast, secured, work-fromanywhere networks. In other words, the exploding number of business internet and broadband links still must be deployed, packaged, managed, supported and secured. SD-WAN technology, at least currently, can only do so much to address this growing and complex opportunity. Among global and the largest enterprises, MPLS lines largely are being replaced by DIAs, most notable Ethernet and wavelength services, show findings from TeleGeography and Gartner. Among mid-sized and smaller enterprises that don’t operate locations across multiple countries or in global regions where fixed broadband access can be less reliable and more regulated, one can assume broadband lines are playing a much larger role in the transitions from private to public access. For small, remote workers and less-critical locations, in particular, that includes cable modem and VDSL connections with little or no SLAs, said Gartner researchers. Gartner noted the recent emergence of access options labeled “business broadband” but warned they only offer incremental SLA improvements compared with consumer offerings. Surveys from Aryaka likewise found that while 50 percent of responding enterprises consume what they consider managed or premium internet service, a total of 60 percent leverage non-managed business or consumer internet within their WANs. Many providers now even support “bring your own broadband,” said Gartner, referring to a service provider delivering managed services over broadband sourced by the enterprise. Despite its Wild West nature, the use of unmanaged lines in the last mile comes as little surprise. If the idea is to provide a secondary or “back-up” link that’s readily available, competitively priced, mostly reliable and relatively easy to locally deploy, procuring local site-by-site internet underlay from the lowest-cost service provider – be it cable, LTE or DSL – often will make the most sense. On the other hand, each location still often must handle critical business applications, provides access to cloud services, manage common web browsing and receive internet traffic from visitors, Gartner analysts pointed out, and each of these traffic flows has different security needs. So perhaps it’s also not so surprising that survey respondents cited “slow application performance leading to poor user experiences” for remote workers and at branch offices as the biggest resource-consuming/ time-consuming issues facing their IT help desk or support teams, showed Aryaka’s findings. What is the average product mix of your WAN sites? Source: TeleGeography 2023 Change In Bandwidth Distributions (2018-2022) Source: TeleGeography 2023 n 2022 Little/no impact 26% Little/no impact 22% Little/no impact 26% 25% EDR LOGGED EVENTS: 3,098,946 % THAT ARE CRITICAL ALERTS: 8.43% 05,363 ALERTS: 3.77% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Average Percentage of Sites MPLS DIA Broadband <1 to 4 Mbps 5 to 10 Mbps 11 to 50 Mbps 51 to 100 Mbps 101 to 500 Mbps 501 to 999 Mbps >1,000 Mbps 10% 5% -0% -5% -10% -15% -20% Difference in Average Percentage of Sites (2018-22) 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 MPLS DIA Broadband 38 CHANNELV ISION | MARCH - APRIL 2023
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