Without standards, the SD-WAN market has been hindered by a lack of multi-vendor interoperability. SD-WAN managed service providers (MSPs) are spending millions of dollars on integration and normalization to support the many SD-WAN products, and the myriad of virtualized network functions (VNFs) that provide value-added capabilities.

Deployment of virtualized SD-WAN-associated VNFs are further complicated because of the wide variations of NFV infrastructure (NFVi), ranging from public cloud “as a service” to universal CPE. On top of that, traditional hardware-centric testing tools and platforms are inadequate to address NFVi variability.

This paper discusses the latest developments in SD-WAN standardization and new approaches for assuring SD-WAN integrity.