Glossary
Control plane
Controls the transport of traffic packets over the network through CPE devices. The control plane includes the orchestrator and the SD-WAN Controller.
Customer Premise Equipment (CPE)
Telecommunication equipment, including virtual machines, that handles traffic transmission within the SD-WAN network. Traffic can be sent to a data center to provide network functions such as routing protocols, intrusion prevention, or anti-virus protection.
Data plane
Handles traffic packet transport. The data plane is formed by CPE devices.
DSCP values
6-bit values that define the priority of traffic packets and the type of service required. They are used in combination with traffic classes to provide appropriate priority and bandwidth to critical network traffic, such as traffic from audio and video streaming applications.
Graceful restart
This feature allows a CPE device to notify its peers about an imminent restart, for example, when using BGP. This lets the peers immediately remove the relevant CPE device from the routing table, without waiting for the timeout to end.
Orchestrator
An SD-WAN network management, monitoring and diagnostics tool that also handles Network Function Virtualization (NFV). The orchestrator can be managed using a graphical web interface.
Physical Network Function (PNF)
A pre-deployed ready-to-use network function that is uploaded to the orchestrator web interface. The orchestrator can then handle additional configuration of the PNF.
PNF package
A package, in TAR or ZIP format, that contains the data necessary for deploying and managing the PNF.
SD-WAN Controller
Central component of an SD-WAN network that manages the overlay network, including building an up-to-date topology, configuring CPE devices, and creating transport services.
SD-WAN Gateway
CPE device that has the SD-WAN gateway role. Gateways establish links with all devices on the network, including other gateways, thus providing connectivity between all devices and the SD-WAN Controller. You can install multiple gateways for fault tolerance.
Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
Technology for building communication networks in which the control plane is separated from the data plane and is implemented in software using a centralized SDN controller.
Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN)
Approach to building software-defined networks using a global computer network. SD-WAN networks allow connecting local area networks and users in geographically dispersed locations.
Tenant
A client of your organization that is assigned a logical set of networking and/or computational resources to build an SD-WAN.
Universal CPE (uCPE)
CPEs with additional support for Virtual Network Function deployment. Note that the device must have sufficient hardware resources to avoid involving the data center or the cloud when providing the VNF.
Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM)
A manager that provides management and monitoring of computational, networking, and storage resources in the virtual infrastructure. VNFs use it to interact with all these resources.
Virtual Network Function (VNF)
Network functions implemented as virtual machines on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) computer platforms.
Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM)
Configuration tool for VNFs deployed by the orchestrator.
VNF Package
A package, in TAR or ZIP format, that contains the data necessary for deploying and managing a VNF.
