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Building a Future-Ready Hybrid WAN: How VRF Lite, PBR, and SD-WAN Power Global Enterprise Networks

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  Preface:   From a network architect’s point of view, VRF Lite, PBR and SD-WAN gives you a super flexible, secure and performance optimized WAN architecture. VRF Lite gives you logical segmentation on shared infrastructure so you can keep sensitive departments like Finance isolated without having to deploy separate physical links. PBR gives you precise rule-based traffic steering at specific sites - ideal for enforcing static business policies like forcing ERP traffic onto MPLS or keeping guest Wi-Fi on broadband even in non-SD-WAN locations. SD-WAN is the overarching intelligent WAN fabric that gives you centralized control, application aware routing and dynamic path selection to optimize performance for real-time and cloud-based applications. Together they give you granular control, robust security segmentation and agile traffic optimization across a hybrid WAN that aligns to your compliance needs and evolving business performance requirements. Scenario: ShopWorld In...

How Orange Connects Its Global Offices Using EDIA, Hybrid WAN, and EVPN

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Preface: Orange, a global telecoms company, uses EDIA (Ethernet Dedicated Internet Access) at its HQs in London , Berlin and Paris to ensure each site has guaranteed, high-speed and low-latency internet for critical business apps like Office 365, cloud collaboration tools and secure remote access. These EDIA circuits provide dedicated bandwidth with SLA-backed performance so they’re perfect for HQs that can’t afford downtime or performance degradation. For its branch offices and regional sites across Europe, Orange has a Hybrid WAN architecture where MPLS lines (for latency-sensitive traffic like VoIP and internal systems) and broadband/EDIA connections (for general internet traffic) are combined through an SD-WAN platform , so traffic is intelligently routed and fails over seamlessly during outages. Orange also connects its data centers in Paris and Berlin with EVPN-VXLAN links over its MPLS backbone , so there’s Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity between virtualized environm...

Engineering the Vodafone-Idea Merger: A Deep Dive into ISP Integration and Global Reachability

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  Preface: When two big ISPs merge like Vodafone and Idea in India, ensuring global Internet reachability is a technical must. Both operators have separate Autonomous Systems (ASNs), IP address blocks, backbones, peering and transit agreements. Before the merge, engineers need to plan the consolidation of ASNs, harmonize BGP routing policies and integrate IP address resources to avoid route leaks and blackholes. All upstream and peering relationships need to be reviewed and updated to ensure customer prefixes from both legacy networks are globally reachable. In the Vodafone Idea merger scenario this means merging their routing domains, advertising prefixes consistently across international exchanges and validating end to end connectivity to ensure seamless Internet services to millions of customers during and after the merge. Prerequisite taken before ISP merger: Kindly follow below steps as a prerequisite before ISP merger -- AS strategy Do: Keep both ASNs for now ...

The Invisible Backbone: Netflix, CBH, and the Magic of LSP

  Preface: As streaming becomes a part of our daily lives, the tech behind delivering high-quality content to millions of people worldwide has gotten incredibly advanced — and invisible. One of the most innovative architectures powering this seamless experience is the Cloud-Based Headend (CBH) system, a modern evolution that moves traditional content processing and distribution workflows to the cloud. Companies like Netflix have taken this to the next level using CBH-like architectures combined with edge caching to ensure their massive libraries of shows and movies are always just a click away, no matter where you are. But even this cutting-edge system can have issues, especially when it comes to network latency — the hidden villain that can turn a perfectly planned movie night into a buffering wheel and pixelated scene fest. Imagine a user in Virginia trying to watch a new series on Netflix and getting long loading times and constant interruptions because the local edge cache ...