Interoperability means that different systems communicate with one another in a common language, instantly translating incoming data without losing its context or meaning. This is a key feature for many business solutions, including cloud services and self-driving cars.
Wide area network technology, or WANs, enable organizations to connect LANs and other networks across long distances. These connections can be built for specific use cases or leverage public systems like the Internet to keep costs at scale.
For example, an organization with a headquarters in Boston and offices in New York and Chicago needs to connect them all. It could build its own WAN, but that would be expensive and difficult to manage at scale. Instead, it might lease a WAN service from a provider and connect the endpoints to each other over private leased lines or via the public Internet.
A WAN can be designed to handle a variety of traffic types, speeds and security requirements. For instance, WAN optimization helps improve performance by deduplication, compression and caching data closer to the endpoint. Other features, such as traffic shaping, establish QoS parameters to prioritize network packets for time-sensitive applications over less important ones. An enterprise may also choose a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), which monitors performance and picks the most efficient route for each type of data based on the latest information. This is a cost-effective solution for many customers, especially those with high bandwidth requirements. An optical data networking service for large, dedicated point-to-point data connections, wavelength service offers multiple speeds over a Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network. This type of WAN is ideal for businesses with high bandwidth and low latency requirements.
