This week's guest on TeleGeography Explains the Internet has a deep history in networking.
Khalid Raza was involved in some of the earliest large-scale MPLS deployments. Then, after seeing the limitations of MPLS, he co-founded Viptela–diving head-first into the SD-WAN revolution.
Khalid is now the Founder and CEO of Graphiant, a Silicon Valley-based startup. In this interview, he describes how enterprise networks have changed and why we need an approach beyond MPLS and SD-WAN.
We also discuss Graphiant's origins, its approach to solving modern network problems, and how it differentiates itself from other NaaS and WAN services in the current market.
Of course, you can’t talk about networking without talking about security, so that comes up as well. We also look at how Khalid sees enterprise networks developing in the years to come. Full episode below.
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Key Takeaways
Evolution of Enterprise Networking and Emerging Challenges
Enterprise networking has evolved over the past two decades, moving from MPLS to SD-WAN. MPLS emerged to unify voice and data on a common IP infrastructure, requiring reliable, scalable, and secure any-to-any connectivity.
While MPLS grew into a $50 billion market, it faced limitations, including high costs for increased bandwidth and reliance on service providers for policy changes. SD-WAN sought to address these issues by enabling the use of commodity internet bandwidth, giving enterprises policy control, and providing application visibility.
However, as networking needs continued to change with the rise of cloud applications, dispersed users, arbitrary data locations, and the need for security over an uncontrollable internet, SD-WAN introduced its own complexities.
Future Vision of the WAN and the "Industrialization of the Internet"
The future of the Wide Area Network (WAN) is seen as moving toward the edge, driven by the increasing volume of data generated there and the relative cost-effectiveness of compute and storage compared to bandwidth.
This shift favors peer-to-peer data exchanges, particularly for B2B transactions and data monetization at the edge, where backhauling data to the cloud creates latency and cost issues.
This evolution is leading toward an "industrialization of the internet," where the network becomes less of a consumer medium and more of an industrial one, handling critical data with specific requirements like privacy, security, and path adherence.
In this future, the vision is for applications to become more network-aware and program the network based on their specific needs and desired characteristics (like latency, delay, or compliance requirements), rather than the network trying to be application-aware and making complex decisions at every node.
