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Poll: WAN connectivity options — Leased line? MPLS? VPN? SD-WAN?
by Peter (Spiceworks)
on Dec 13, 2018 at 16:54 UTC
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IT departments have many options when it comes to connecting an organizations' locations that are spread out physically, whether that's miles away, in another state, or even in another country. In Spiceworks, there's no shortage of IT pros asking for help comparing the many options for connecting multiple sites together to create a wide area network (WAN). It's common for IT pros to ask whether they should go with leased lines, site-to-site VPN, SD-WAN, or similar technologies.
And there are a number of reasons a company would want to go with one option or the other. But have you ever wondered what technologies other companies are using? Let's run a poll to figure out how IT departments in organizations are connecting multiple sites together.
Vote below in this anonymous poll so the Community can better understand what technologies everyone is using. Then let's discuss in the comments so everyone can better understand why the numbers look like they do.
If you're using multiple technologies, feel free to vote for multiple options. And if you're using a site-to-site connection technology not listed, feel free to add your own option.
Edited Dec 13, 2018 at 17:06 UTC
Poll: WAN connectivity options — Leased line? MPLS? VPN? SD-WAN? Anonymous Closed | 718 votes by 458 users
VPN 37%
MPLS 18%
Leased / private line 11%
SD-WAN 9%
Metro Ethernet 6%
Point to Point wireless 5%
Fiber loop (we're all pretty close to each other) 5%
I don't know what I am talking about 2%
We don't need to use any of these technologies 2%
A Hodge Podge of everything! 1%
Pen, paper and stamps 1%
Kite string and 2 soup cans 1%
DirectAccess 1%
DIA (Direct Internet Access) 1%
kotlx 0%
Azure S2S 0%
Sched4 0%
VPLS 0%
Fiber 0%
IPoAC 0%
(Select target option)Leased / private line MPLS SD-WAN VPN Metro Ethernet We don't need to use any of these technologies Fiber loop (we're all pretty close to each other) I don't know what I am talking about DirectAccess Point to Point wireless A Hodge Podge of everything! Sched4 Kite string and 2 soup cans Pen, paper and stamps kotlx IPoAC Azure S2S DIA (Direct Internet Access) VPLS Fiber
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Sean C. in IT
Dec 13, 2018 at 17:15 UTC
Used to use a lot of leased lines, but they sure were expensive! We've switched over to site-to-site VPNs now. Much cheaper, after the initial investment in new routers to support it. Internet in our area is very reliable, so we aren't losing much there either.
Scott4074 Dec 13, 2018 at 17:25 UTC
Right now we're using MPLS, but we're going to start utilizing site-to-site VPNs as well. Hopefully the performance will improve.
tommctomerson Dec 13, 2018 at 17:27 UTC
MPLS, because my options are limited to copper, satellite or 4G.
DanielNeffITGuy
I've found VPN's to be a great option (low cost, ease and speed of deployment, flexibility on internet connectivity, etc.) in the last few years, since we expanded beyond a single site. I had existing Cisco hardware on which I could easily build my hub and spoke VPN to connect my branch locations to my core infrastructure, providing access to the various resources needed by my users. It's performed well and been a very reliable solution for the company.
Mike (AeroCom Inc.)
Brand Representative for AeroCom, Inc.
Great poll, Peter. As a business ISP broker for 15 years, I've seen a lot of trends come and go... Frame Relay, point to point T1, IPsec, MPLS, EVPL, SD-WAN... SD-WAN is all the rage but there are still cases to be made for each.
Here is some vendor-agnostic, educational content on WAN connectivity, if anyone wants to do a little research on differentiators, pricing differences, etc.:
SD-WAN, MPLS, P2P, or IPsec VPN... Which WAN? [Infographic]
Is SD-WAN better than MPLS?
More WAN content
AeroCom, Inc.1,248 FollowersFollow
Howard8569
ET&T is an IT service provider.
Site to Site vpn is what i use for most of my clients. I have worked n places with a fiber loop but that's very expensive.
You need another option in your list.
I have also done Point to Point wireless back haul links on several occasions where buildings where close to each other and we could get line of site.
PnkFld7892 Dec 13, 2018 at 19:22 UTC
DanielNeffITGuy wrote:
Pretty much the same here, but use Calyptix hardware.
bbigford
Flextechs is an IT service provider.
S2S/C2S VPN for most cases. MPLS where they need the performance. SD-WAN for most cases moving forward where they need performance and less complexity than MPLS.
J_Rae
We currently use site-to-site VPNs to connect our small offices around the state to our headquarters. I am looking into SDWAN to see if that's a better option for us, but that technology is still on the newer side so there's a lot of research to be done on my part.
BiscuitKing
We do site-to-site VPN.
weezon Dec 13, 2018 at 20:03 UTC
I hear great things about VPN concentrator appliances for a nice performance boost.
SeanMcIT
I use VPN's, two cisco boxes connecting locations. Going to hopefully get the other locations online the same way in the new year.
We're all VPN here. However we're opening a new site just a quarter mile away from main site so we're trying to get a direct fiber connection there
troberts2
SDWAN and VPN ...... anyone else use MPLS for any reason? We did it back in early 2000's to bond 4 T1's between sites etc.
Pure Capsaicin
dbeato
We have dedicated Leased Lines, VPLS and VPN. Some customers still have MPLS.
vmvmadmin Dec 14, 2018 at 07:24 UTC
We use site-to-site VPN an that is enough for us.
WCRORLANDO
We have evolved from dialup, multiple T1s, VPNs and are now on GB MetroE. Fast, easy, secure and inexpensive (in this area). We will continue to evaluate and adjust as pricing allows and performance demands
IanH
Recenly deployed SD-WAN. So far, so good!
Brendan8517
Leased dark fiber for the schools that are within a mile or so of our hub site. Leased lit fiber (Metro-E) for the schools that are further away, but still within town. One small alternative school has a cable modem with a VPN connection back to the hub site instead of fiber.
johnnyb6307
We had a co-location with a leased point-to-point fiber line, but this year we overhauled and are now using a Site-to-Site VPN (IPSec) to access our Tier 1 IaaS environment. One thing I discovered the hard way during this project is that although the throughput over a S2S VPN is great, the latency is usually still too high to run applications that require direct SQL access across the connection. The leased line we had was a 20/20Mbps line going across town (<10ms latency, sometimes <5ms). The networking package we purchased from the IaaS provider is a 100Mbps line, but the data center is about 500 miles away. This resulted in ~50ms pings, which is still pretty decent, but still caused a huge performance impact on the application. My solution to the latency problem was to set up a Remote Desktop server in the same environment as the SQL server and have users access the application via RemoteApp. This meant that the application could pass traffic to the SQL server at LAN speeds, while RDP traffic (which is very resilient as far as latency goes) passes over the slower S2S connection. Setting up RemoteApp was easy....training users was the hard part.
This case reminded me that just because a connection has a large throughput potential, it is not necessarily going to result in fast performance. There are many more factors involved than just throughput potential.
deanmoncaster
VPN is the easiest cheapest and most flexible!
WordenDLG18
Site-to-site VPNs now. Twenty years ago leased lines.
Sean Wolsey
As a department of the city, we are on a full redundancy loop of fiber. It runs all the way around from one location, making a stop in each of the other locations, and comes back into the origination point. There are fiber switches provided by the city at each location that are set up with the twin links as a teamed trunk for redundancy. if the loop gets interrupted anywhere, an alarm is set off, the city guys trace the break down and fix it, and nobody ever looses service. Since the links are all 10-Gig, there's plenty of bandwidth for everything, even when a break occurs - which happened 2 or 3 months ago (dang road construction!).