Protecting Your Network – MEC Networks Corporation

Cato Networks: Hands-free Management for SD-WAN Service

MEC Digital — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 07:44:15 +0000

The previous Burger King jingle came to mind when pondering today’s introduction of Cato Hands-free Management for our global managed SD-WAN Service. Hold the pickles or the lettuce — it doesn’t much matter; Burger King gave you the burger the way you like it. And that’s true with how we allow you to manage your network.Unlike a conventional telco, Cato has perpetually let customers run their networks or, if they, preferred to share a number of their networking responsibilities with Cato or its partners. However, with Cato Hands-free Management, customers will outsource all networking and security configuration responsibilities to the expert workers at Cato or its partners.

Cato Hands-free Management is a part of the Cato Managed Services portfolio that includes:

Managed Threat Detection and Response (MDR) continuously monitors the network for compromised, malware-infected endpoints. Cato MDR uses a mix of machine learning algorithms that mine network traffic for indicators of compromise, and human verification of detected anomalies. Cato specialists then guide customers on remediating compromised endpoints.
Intelligent Last-Mile Management provides 24×7, last-mile monitoring. Just in case of an outage or performance degradation, Cato can work with the ISP to resolve the problem, providing all relevant info and keeping the client informed on the progress.
Rapid Site Deployment provides customers with remote help in deploying Cato Sockets, Cato’s zero-touch, SD-WAN device.

Regardless of the management approach, Cato retains responsibility for the underlying Cato Cloud infrastructure, upgrading, patching, or otherwise maintaining Cato software or hardware.

What’s the right approach for you?

Why so many ways to network management? because there’s no right approach, there’s only your approach. Companies, like people, have different needs. In some cases, running the network themselves could be a requirement in different cases, though, the very last thing the IT manager would like to try and do is take responsibility for every move and change. Each method has its strengths. With self-service, enterprises realize unexcelled agility by configuring and troubleshooting the networks themselves, doing in seconds what otherwise needed legacy telcos hours or days. For added help, co-management permits customers to trust current support from Cato or its partners without relinquishing control for overall management. And, of course, with Cato Hands-Free corporations gain the convenience of full management, though, they’ll still build changes themselves, if they want. With Cato, you do get to manage the network your way. And this says nothing regarding Cato’s wide selection of professional and support services.

Management designed for Digital Business

This kind of flexibility is strange for managed network services, which historically only offered full management. Telco-managed networks are too cumbersome, too complex to permit corporations self–service management of the security and network infrastructure. It needs a network designed from the bottom up for the needs of today’s digital business.And historically managed services place restrictions on customers, tying the overlay (SD-WAN or MPLS) to the telco’s underlay (last-mile and backbone services). Requiring use of the telco’s underly left enterprises subject to high costs, restricted geographic reach, and lengthy deployment times. Such an approach is, again, incompatible with a digital business that looks to be leaner and more agile, notably as the network should more and more connect clouds, mobile users, and branch locations situated outside of the telcos in the operation area.

Cato Cloud was unambiguously designed for the needs of the digital business and not simply in how we expect about management. Enterprises bring their last-mile access to Cato or procure last-mile services through Cato partners. They then connect to Cato’s global backbone through any local internet access, releasing them from the lock-in of traditional telco services. As a globally distributed cloud service, Cato seamlessly connects mobile and cloud resources, while not being in chains to specific geographical location or physical infrastructure.With Cato, organizations get the tomatoes and lettuce: the peace of mind of a managed service with the speed and agility of self-service. And, yes, you Wendy’s lovers, there’s lots of beef there also.

Download Free Cato Networks Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading cyber security experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Cato Networks: Hands-free Management for SD-WAN Service appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Cato Networks: SD-WAN Provides An Alternative To MPLS (A Case Study)

MEC Digital — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:52:50 +0000

What’s transitioning like to SD-WAN? ask Nick Dell. The IT manager at a leading automotive parts manufacturer recently shared his experience transitioning his company from MPLS to Cato SD-WAN. throughout the webinar, we spoke concerning the reasons behind the decision, the differences between carrier-managed SD-WAN services and cloud-based SD-WAN, and the insights he gained from his experience.

Dell’s company has been in business for over sixty years and employs 2,000 individuals placed across 9 locations. Manufacturing plants needed non-stop network connectivity to make sure delivery to Ford, Toyota, GM, Tesla, and Volkswagen. Important applications included cloud ERP and VoIP.

Before moving to SD-WAN, the company used an MPLS provider that managed everything. The carrier provided a comprehensive solution to deal with the crucial uptime needs by having 3 cloud firewalls at every data center, and an LTE wireless backup at every location. After they signed the agreement with the MPLS provider, the solution appeared to be precisely what they needed to support their applications and uptime needs. However, they quickly discovered issues with the MPLS solution that were impacting the business.

The Catalyst to make a change

Dell noticed several challenges with the MPLS service:

#1 bandwidth — Usage would peak at certain times and therefore the provider’s QoS configuration didn’t work properly. Nick wished to add bandwidth, but for some sites, the MPLS provider offered solely restricted or no fiber connections. For instance, the MPLS provider would say fiber isn’t offered at a definite site, however, the local LEC delivered the T1s using fiber.

#2 internet Configuration Failures — the company also wished to provide OEM partners access the cloud ERP system, however, the MPLS provider was unable to successfully configure Internet-based VPNs for the partners. Internet failover also failed to work as promised. when sites would fail, not all components would switchover properly, making failures in application delivery.

#3 Authentication Failures — The user authentication functionality provided by the MPLS provider was purported to help once users would move their laptops or different endpoints from wired to wireless connections. However, the authentication method usually failed, leaving users without internet access. Only after 2 years did the provider propose a solution – software that would cost $5,000 and need installing agents on all the laptops.

These problems manifested themselves in everyday operations. Someone sending an email with a large attachment would cause the ERP system to be slow to respond, that successively caused delays in getting shipments out.

Dell and other leadership knew it was time for a change. They needed high availability internet with more bandwidth that worked as designed. Moreover, they needed a provider that will work in a partner relationship that would deliver 100 percent internet uptime, fiber to all or any locations, offer a lower-cost solution, and embody all-in-one security.

The Catalyst to make a change

Dell investigated 3 SD-WAN scenarios to switch the MPLS network.

Carrier Managed SD-WAN
Appliance-based SD-WAN
Cloud-based SD-WAN

Moving to SD-WAN with a similar carrier they were using for MPLS appeared like a simple move, however, Dell wasn’t inclined to deal with some of the same problems with poor service, and a “ticket-taker” attitude instead of problem-solving. The carrier conjointly couldn’t guarantee a 4-hour replacement window for the SD-WAN hardware.

The appliance-based SD-WAN solution would free them from the carrier problems, and ownership and management of the solution would fall to Dell and his team. The direct costs were high, and security wasn’t integral to the solution.

Dell also looked into different Cloud-based SD-WAN providers, however because of their size, the provider wished to put them with an MSP where SD-WAN isn’t their core business. The solution didn’t give full security so they would need to buy further security appliances. The provider could also not guarantee a 4-hour response time to exchange failed hardware.

Why Cato

With the Cato Cloud solution, Dell can decide on any ISP available at every location and now have fiber at all locations with 5-20x additional bandwidth than before. This has allowed them to possess additional redundancy to the internet and High availability (HA) – with each line and appliances – at every location. The bandwidth constraints are gone and QoS works. once there’s downtime, the failover process works of course.

Describing the deployment experience as quick and simple, Dell only needed a 30-minute lunch break to cut over one location that previously was one amongst the most troublesome with outages and backup problems.

One of the driving factors that convinced Dell to go with Cato was the support, that he describes as “transparent and fast to resolve” problems. “They hear us, they want to solve our issues,” says Dell. He was also pleasantly shocked that Cato was the sole vendor of all the solutions they investigated that didn’t try to attempt to cash in on a solution with a recurring fee.

Dell demonstrated his ROI on the Cato solution in a few ways that. bandwidth has enhanced considerably, the accumulated network visibility lets him troubleshoot quicker, security is integrated, and at the same time, overall costs have been reduced by 25th. Users’ satisfaction is also down. Users are less annoyed because they’re not “being blocked from websites,” he says. As for IT, well, they’re also less frustrating because handling support and opening tickets are, as Nick place it, “…so simple now.”

Download Free Cato Networks Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading cyber security experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Cato Networks: SD-WAN Provides An Alternative To MPLS (A Case Study) appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Cato Networks: How Traditional Telco Services Hinder Digital Transformation

MEC Digital — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 05:24:13 +0000

How are digital business transformation projects impacting enterprise networks? To answer that question, we asked over 1,600 IT professionals worldwide. The report, Telcos and therefore the future of the WAN in 2019 target those 432 who purchase telco services for organizations with MPLS backbones.

Repeatedly we heard that SD-WAN continues to serve as the basis of their digital transformation efforts. No surprise there. What’s perhaps more attention-grabbing, though, is the shift towards managed services. The necessity for foreseeable delivery across the global network to the site, cloud resources, and mobile users whereas at the same time developing a security design that may accommodate local internet access is pushing several companies to turn to managed SD-WAN services. The traditional source of these services, the telcos, inadequately address customer expectations around speed, agility, and overall value.

SD-WAN: It’s Not Just about Costs

Since SD-WAN burst onto the market, cost savings are routinely cited because of the reason for deploying the technology. Yes, SD-WAN will take advantage of reasonable internet connectivity to scale back network spend however there are several different advantages, particularly agility and improved cloud performance, that conjointly come with SD-WAN.

Respondents echoed similar results in this year’s survey. Solely a third of respondents indicated that their motivation for getting SD-WAN was to address excessive WAN-related costs. The other motives? The highest-ranked ones involved improving internet access (46%), followed by the necessity for added bandwidth (39%) and improved last-mile availability (38%).

WAN Transformation is the New Normal

No surprise then that a lot of companies ought to be adopting SD-WAN as the basis of WAN transformation. In fact, the percentage of organizations reworking their WAN has grown significantly since our last survey. Nearly half of respondents (44%) indicated that they’d or were considering deploying SD-WAN. Last year the amount was simply over a quarter of respondents.

With that said, digital transformation puts needs on the network that exceed the capabilities of SD-WAN. The overwhelming majority of respondents (85%) indicated they’d be braving networking use cases in 2019 that are neglected or out-of-step with SD-WAN technology.

Security could be a case in point. SD-WAN alone says nothing regarding defending the company edge. Half of the respondents will give secure internet access from any location with the largest security challenges being defensive against malware/ransomware (70%) and implementing corporate security policies on mobile users (49%). All of that is out-of-scope for SD-WAN alone. Taming those security challenges is essential for SD-WAN to enhance cloud performance and scale back network costs.

Managed Services are Going to be Essential for WAN Transformation

With such a large amount of components and complexities, most respondents (75%) are turning to service providers for their SD-WAN design and deployment. providers are typically higher equipped to integrate SD-WAN with different technologies to deal with broader IT challenges.

Legacy telcos are the factual source for managed SD-WAN services however not the preferred ones. Respondents stay overwhelmingly discontent with telco agility, velocity, and support:

Respondents gave telcos a 54 (out of 100) once asked if they thought network service pricing was honest. On overall experience, telcos scored lower (3.33 out of 5) than cloud application providers (3.70) and cloud datacenter providers (3.71). Only a pair of respondents indicated that telcos exceeded their expectations in delivering new features and enhancements. Day-to-day network operations prove tough with traditional telco services. Nearly half (46%) of respondents reported that moves, adds, and changes (MACs) need a minimum of one business day (8 hours or more). Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated that deploying new locations needed three or a lot of business weeks.

Managed Service Blended with Cloud Attributes

There remains a robust interest in network services with cloud attributes of agility and self-service. versatile management models are essential to the present story. a lot of specifically,

71% of respondents indicated that telcos take too long to resolve issues.

48% complained regarding the lack of visibility into telco services.

80% of most well-liked self-service or co-management models rather than full management model needed by traditional telcos. It’s why we have a tendency to believe so powerfully that managed SD-WAN services should use a cloud-native architecture. To find out a lot regarding cloud-native networks and therefore the results of that analysis, transfer Telcos and therefore the way forward for the WAN in 2019.

Download Free Cato Networks Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading cyber security experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Cato Networks: How Traditional Telco Services Hinder Digital Transformation appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Cato Networks: What is a Cloud-Native Network and Why Does It Matter

MEC Digital — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 07:37:09 +0000

It’s no secret that CIOs wish their networks to be more agile, better ready to accommodate new requirements of the digital business. SD-WAN has created vital advancements in this regard. And, yet, it’s also equally clear that SD-WAN alone cannot futureproof enterprise networks.

Mobile users, cloud resources, security services — all are crucial to the digital business and however, none are native to SD-WAN. companies should invest in further infrastructure for those capabilities. skilled security and networking talent are still required to run those networks, expertise that’s usually in brief supply. Operational costs, headaches, and delays are incurred when upgrading and maintaining security and networking appliances.

Outsourcing networking to a telco-managed network service doesn’t solve the matter. Capital, staffing, and operational costs still exist, solely now marked-up and charged back to the customer. And, to create matters worse, enterprises lose visibility into and control the traffic traversing the managed network services.

How then are you able to prepare your network for the digital business of these days — and tomorrow? Cloud-native networks provide some way forward.

Like cloud-native application development, cloud-native networks run the majority of their route calculation, policy-enforcement, and security inspections — the guts of the network — on a purposeful software platform designed to take advantage of the cloud’s attributes. The software platform is multitenant by design operating on off-the-rack servers capable of breakthrough performance antecedently solely possible with custom hardware. Eliminating proprietary appliances changes the technical, operational, and fiscal characteristics of enterprise networks.

5 Attributes of Cloud-Native Network Services

To better understand their impact, consider the five attributes a provider’s software and networking platform must meet to be considered cloud-native: multitenancy, scalability, velocity, efficiency, and ubiquity.

Multitenancy
With cloud-native networks, customers share the underlying infrastructure with the required abstraction to supply every with private network experience. The provider is liable for maintaining and scaling the underlying infrastructure. Like cloud compute and storage, cloud-native networks don’t have any idle appliances; multitenancy permits providers to maximize their underlying infrastructure.
Scalability
As cloud services, cloud-native networks carry no sensible scaling limitation. The platform accommodates new traffic masses or new requirements. The software stack will instantly make the most of additional compute, storage, memory, or networking resources. As such, sanctioning compute-intensive features, like SSL decryption, doesn’t impact service functionality.
Velocity
By developing their own software platforms, cloud-native network providers will quickly innovate, creating new features and capabilities instantly available. All customers across all regions benefit from the foremost current feature set. Troubleshooting takes less time since support and platform development groups are bound together. And because the core functionality is in software, cloud-native networks will expand to new regions in hours and days not months.
Efficiency
Cloud-native network design promotes efficiency that causes higher network quality at lower costs. Platform ownership reduces third-party license fees and nominal support costs. leveraging the huge build-out of IP infrastructure avoids the costs telcos incurred constructing and maintaining physical transmission networks. A smart, software overlay, monitors the underlying network providers and selects the optimum one for every packet. The result: carrier-grade network at an unmatched price/performance.
Ubiquity
Like today’s digital business, the enterprise network should be available all over, accessible from several edges supporting physical, cloud, and mobile resources. features parity across regions is important for max efficiency. Access to the cloud-native network ought to be using physical and virtual appliances, mobile clients, and third-party IPsec compatible edges. This way, truly one network will connect any resource, anywhere.

A Revolutionary, Not Evolutionary, Shift in Networking

By meeting all 5 criteria, cloud-native networks avoid the cost overhead and stagnant process of traditional service providers. Such advantages cannot be gained by just porting software or hosting an appliance within the cloud. It’s a network that has to be engineered with the DNA of cloud service from scratch. In this, cloud-native networks are a revolution in network architecture and design.

The post Cato Networks: What is a Cloud-Native Network and Why Does It Matter appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Cato Networks: How SD-WAN Conquers Last Mile Limitations

MEC Networks Corporation — Sun, 05 May 2019 07:22:22 +0000

As more businesses require day in and day out uptime of their networks, they can’t bear to “put all their investments tied up on one place.” Even MPLS with it’s vaunted “5 9s” SLA, has battled with last-mile accessibility. SD-WAN offers a path forward that fundamentally improves last-mile uptime without obviously expanding expenses.

Early Attempts To Solve The Problem

Starting endeavors to take care of the problems and restrictions of the last mile had constrained achievement. To improve by and large webpage accessibility, network directors would match a MPLS connection with a backup Internet connection, viably squandering the limit of the Internet backup. A failover likewise implied all the present sessions would be lost and commonly the failover procedure and time allotment was not exactly perfect.

Another early endeavor was link-holding which totals various last-mile transport administrations. This improved last mile data transmission and excess however didn’t make any advantages for the center mile transfer speed. Working at the link layer, link-holding isn’t itself software-defined networking, however the idea of consolidating various transports made ready for SD-WAN that has demonstrated itself to be an answer for the present computerized change.

How The Problem Is Solved Today

Working off the idea from link-clinging to consolidate various transports and transport types, SD-WAN enhances the idea by moving the usefulness up the stack. SD-WAN totals last-mile administrations, speaking to them as a solitary pipe to the application. The SD-WAN is in charge of making up for contrasts in line quality, organizing access to the administrations, and tending to different issues while accumulating various sorts of lines.

With Cato, we enhance the last mile utilizing a few methods, for example, approach-based steering, crossbreed WAN help, dynamic/dynamic links, bundle misfortune moderation, and QoS (upstream and downstream). Cato can advance traffic on the keep going a mile, yet additionally on the center mile which gives a start to finish improvement to augment throughput on the whole way. The requirement for high accessibility, high data transfer capacity, and execution are accomplished by empowering clients to organize traffic by application type and link quality, and powerfully appoint the most proper link to an application.

The Cato Socket is a zero-contact SD-WAN gadget sent to physical areas. Cato Socket utilizes various Internet links in a functioning/dynamic design to amplify limit, bolsters 4G/LTE links for failover, and applies the separate traffic enhancements and parcel misfortune disposal calculations.

Willem-Jan Herckenrath, Manager ICT for Alewijnse, portrays how Cato Cloud tended to his organization’s network prerequisites with a solitary stage: “We effectively supplanted our MPLS last-mile links with Internet links while keeping up the nature of our superior quality video conferencing framework and our Citrix stage for 2D and 3D CAD over the organization.”

SD-WAN Leads The Way

The highlights and capacities of Cato Cloud engage associations to break free from the requirements of MPLS and Internet-based network last mile difficulties and opens up potential outcomes for improved accessibility, deftness, security, and permeability. Data transfer capacity-hungry applications and relocations to the Cloud have made a WAN change unrest with SD-WAN driving the way.

The post Cato Networks: How SD-WAN Conquers Last Mile Limitations appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.