New Aryaka reports notes trends in 2017 WAN market
Aryaka, a global software-defined wide-area network provider, recently published its third “State of WAN Connectivity” report, reviewing WAN traffic, trends, reliability, bandwidth and hurdles in application performance spanning various regions and industries.
Aryaka gathered data from more than 5,000 locations in 63 countries to gauge the performance of file transfers and cloud/SaaS applications across the public web. The aim of the report, according to the authors, was to provide WAN managers and IT professionals with data to better position themselves as a businesses partner, in addition to underscoring the risks anchored to WAN deployments.
The report found internet bandwidths are increasing at the WAN edge and over short distances. Globally, around 12% of Aryaka customers have links with bandwidth less than 10 Mbps, a decrease over 50% from 34% the year before. In addition, 25% of customers reported having one or more 100 Mbps links. Among developing countries, the authors found access-site bandwidth never dipped below 2 Mbps.
The report also found the volume of enterprise traffic continues to swell across all regions and verticals, the most notable being in Asia-Pacific (APAC). In comparison to 2016, bandwidth growth in APAC eclipsed all other areas with nearly 250% growth. Moreover, the APAC area was the only region where network traffic maintained a positive trend relative to the previous year. In terms of verticals, WAN traffic in the the manufacturing industry grew from 296% in 2015 to 441% in 2016.
About 50% of enterprise traffic is a mix of HTTP and HTTPs, according to the survey. The report discovered a decrease in the usage of on-premises applications, suggesting companies are substituting cloud-based applications with new applications capable of fulfilling similar functions.
While WAN adoption continues to grow, it’s not without its share of challenges. Certain WAN components are hampering companies from conducting business online, particularly when application traffic has to travel over macroscopic distances.
“TCP application response times can be as high as 40 seconds and have a variation of nearly 200% depending on the distance between the sites,” wrote the authors. “As distance increases, the problem is further accentuated. Our tests revealed that the link with the highest variability in response time was the link between Singapore and Dubai.” The Americas, however, have few variations in the response time staying in the range of 8 to 20%.
Despite these drawbacks, WAN traffic continues to grow, regardless of region or vertical. The researchers attributed the growth in WAN traffic to the widespread adoption of cloud services, data center consolidation, globalization, uptick in data volume, outsourcing and individual devices.
“A regional SD-WAN solution saves the enterprise on costs and reduces complexity at the branch. However, it does not address global application performance challenges. Regional solutions are still subject to middle-mile latency and packet loss, reducing the effectiveness of employing such a solution in the first place,” the authors concluded.
