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CompTIA Security+ 3.2 CompTIA Security+ 3.1
TechKnowSurge Catalog Interactives Traditional WAN or SD-WAN?
InteractiveSecurityFree

Traditional WAN or SD-WAN?

Router by router, or one central controller? Sort each WAN task as traditional or SD-WAN. Land five in a row.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

Routers have two planes. The data plane is the construction worker: it moves the data. The control plane is the foreman: it decides where the data should go. In a traditional WAN, each router carries its own control plane, and each one is configured by hand: its routing protocol, its VPN tunnels to the other sites, its access lists. With many sites, that is a lot of work, and every change means visiting routers one by one. SD-WAN is software-defined networking for the WAN. Software on each router extends the control plane to a central controller. You program what you want, where traffic should flow and what security to apply, and the controller works out the details: it builds the VPNs between sites and puts the ACLs in the right places. It is connection independent, so cable, fiber, cellular and different ISPs are managed as one network, and it can test the links, fail over and balance load. The result is scalable, flexible and easier to manage. To sort a card, ask whether the work happens on each router or in one central place.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+
3.2 Given a scenario, apply security principles to secure enterprise infrastructure.
3.1 Compare and contrast security implications of different architecture models.

Key terms

Software-Defined WAN
SD-WAN
A virtualized approach to managing wide area network connections using software-defined networking principles.
Control Plane
The part of a network device responsible for making routing and policy decisions, such as running routing protocols to build and maintain the routing table, which the data plane then uses to forward traffic. The control plane handles the intelligence of the network while the data plane handles the actual packet forwarding.
Data Plane
The part of a network device responsible for actually forwarding packets toward their destinations based on rules and tables built by the control plane. In a router, the data plane looks up each packet's destination in the forwarding table and sends it out the correct interface at high speed.
Wide Area Network
WAN
A network that spans a large geographic area, connecting multiple local area networks.
Scalability
The ability of a system to handle increased load by adding resources without degrading performance.

Topics

Interactive Streak Sort

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