CATO Networks

MARCH 8, 2017

Anyone whos purchased MPLS bandwidth has experienced the surreal. While at home you might spend $50 for a 50 Mbps Internet link, MPLS services can cost 10 times more for a fraction of the bandwidth. So much depends on how you answer certain questions about your business, the resources available, and your networking requirements.

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CATO Networks

MARCH 5, 2020

As critical business applications migrate to the cloud, and the mobile workforce continues to grow, networking and security solutions need to evolve in order to meet the changing business needs. 1990s – 2000s: MPLS and the Era of Clear Network Boundaries? 1990s – 2000s: MPLS and the Era of Clear Network Boundaries?

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CATO Networks

APRIL 2, 2018

Those complaints were just the symptom of the costs and complexity that had developed around their global network architecture. Over the years, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) had left Paysafe with a mix of offices connected by MPLS and Internet-based VPNs. MPLS was no better. Deploying MPLS sites was a nightmare.

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CATO Networks

MARCH 17, 2022

One of the common drivers for this project is cost savings, specifically the reduction of MPLS connectivity costs. But, what happens when the cost of MPLS is low? Should these customers stay with MPLS? Work from home shifts the Spokes Imagine now, that we suddenly moved to a work-from-home hybrid model.

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CATO Networks

MAY 26, 2022

MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) has been an industry-standard in enterprise networking for decades. But with modern enterprises relying more and more on public cloud services like Office 365, Salesforce and SAP Cloud, is MPLS enough? 5 Considerations for Evaluating MPLS and Its Alternatives 1.

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 26, 2019

According to a recent Uptime Institute report , network failures trail only power outages as a cause of downtime. In one form or another the question: how can SD-WAN deliver the same reliability and redundancy as MPLS when it uses the public Internet? SD-WAN + public Internet alone cant. My response?

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CATO Networks

SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

Networking is an enterprise IT discipline where being conservative is often the way to go. After all, without the network, todays technology-powered businesses are dead in the water. The network doesnt have to be totally down, though, to disrupt the business. MPLS is a 20 years old enterprise networking technology.

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CATO Networks

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Its no secret that the legacy WAN faces many challenges adapting to todays business, the big question is: Whats going to replace MPLS? Legacy WAN architectures based on MPLS services provide predictable performance between offices, but theyre not implemented in a way that easily accommodates the new realities facing IT.

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CATO Networks

OCTOBER 26, 2017

As the company grew, Alewijnse found MPLS connectivity to be increasingly unable meet its business requirements. The Dutch engineering company had built a global wide area network (WAN) out of MPLS and Internet services connecting 17 locations 14 in Europe and 3 in the Asia Pacific with about 800 mobile and field employees.

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CATO Networks

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

In the era of digital transformation, your organization might be looking for a more agile and cloud-friendly alternative to MPLS. But while getting off your MPLS contract might seem daunting due to hefty early termination fees, its actually easier and less expensive than you might think. In most contracts, the latter is the case.

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CATO Networks

JUNE 26, 2017

Its become the favorite whipping boy of networking. The Internet is erratic. The Internet is unstable. The Internet is unsecure. But exactly what is wrong with the Internet and can it be fixed? Since the early days of the Internet, routers were shaped by a myriad of technical constraints.

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CATO Networks

APRIL 20, 2022

Maybe youre an IT manager or a network engineer. Its about a year before your MPLS contract expires, and youve been told to cut costs by your CFO. That MPLS too expensive. Lengthy lead-times for site installations (weeks to months,) upgrades, and never-ending rounds of support tickets must all factor into the TCO of your MPLS.

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CATO Networks

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

That means making sure the wide area network (WAN) that connects branch offices, data centers, cloud services and SaaS applications can handle the connectivity needs of digitally empowered global organizations. Multiprotocol label switching protocol (MPLS) based networks, can no longer answer the business needs of a global enterprise.

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 17, 2017

The Search for Affordable MPLS Alternative Global organizations are looking for SD-WAN services to provide an affordable, MPLS alternative. If you are already using MPLS, you are well aware of its challenges: high costs, rigidity, long time to deploy and incompatibility with the growing demand for direct cloud and internet access.

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CATO Networks

APRIL 18, 2019

The IT manager at a leading automotive components manufacturer recently shared his experience transitioning his company from MPLS to Cato SD-WAN. Manufacturing plants needed non-stop network connectivity to ensure delivery to Ford, Toyota, GM, FCA, Tesla, and Volkswagen. Internet failover also did not work as promised.

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CATO Networks

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

Multinational corporations have traditionally needed global MPLS services to build their WAN. By leveraging the power of distributed software, plentiful IP capacity, and off-the-shelf hardware, SD-WAN as a service provides a reliable, flexible, and inexpensive alternative to MPLS. Until recently, there simply was no alternative.

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CATO Networks

JULY 19, 2017

Lets face it, MPLS for all of its high costs and long deployment times, did one thing right – it worked. You knew that the MPLS provider was going to engineer a network that could reach from Mumbai to Houston and work day-in-and-day-out. The same cant be said though for the public Internet. Watch it now here.

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CATO Networks

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Nick Dell is an IT manager who recently led a network transformation initiative at his company, moving from MPLS to SD-WAN. Dell shared why he made that transition and the lessons he learned along the way in the webinar SD-WAN Confessions: How I migrated from MPLS to SD-WAN. Issues arose about a year into the MPLS contract.

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NW Kings

FEBRUARY 28, 2025

As we progress into 2025, the landscape of networking continues to evolve rapidly, with new technologies, protocols, and security measures shaping the way organizations design and manage their networks. CCNA Interview Questions The CCNA certification serves as a foundational credential for network engineers.

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CATO Networks

DECEMBER 13, 2020

If you are about to renew your MPLS contract, or if you need to upgrade your capacitySTOP! Dont commit to another year of MPLS until youve had time to consider if its the right technology to carry your business forward. Modern enterprises now have alternatives to MPLS that are more flexible and just as reliable for building a WAN.

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 5, 2018

As I discussed in my previous post , real-time traffic has two characteristics that are challenging for the Internet. And, as most real-time conversations last orders of magnitude longer than most other types of internet interactions, the probability of a network incident impacting the packet transmission is dramatically higher.

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 15, 2017

Unless you were living under a rock, you probably heard about SD-WAN and its promise to transform enterprise networking as we know it. And, by enterprise networking we mean the use of MPLS at the core of enterprise networks. So, to SD-WAN or to MPLS? The MPLS architecture and its guarantees are now under pressure.

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CATO Networks

APRIL 26, 2016

Anyone with hands-on experience setting up long-haul VPNs over the Internet knows its not a pleasant exercise. Service providers also know this — and make billions on MPLS. It lies at the core of how the Internet was built, its protocols, and how service providers implemented their routing layer.

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CATO Networks

DECEMBER 29, 2019

One of the big selling points of SD-WAN tools is their ability to use the Internet to deliver private-WAN levels of performance and reliability. Give each site connections to two or three Internet providers and you can run even demanding, performance-sensitive applications with confidence. See Figure 1.)

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CATO Networks

JUNE 6, 2018

The world of networking has a language of its own which is continually evolving as new technologies emerge, innovative ways of delivering network services are deployed, and global connectivity becomes increasingly essential. For example, an MPLS connection and an Internet connection. See also WAN Latency.

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CATO Networks

OCTOBER 13, 2016

For decades, one of the primary distinctions between MPLS and internet-based connectivity was guaranteed latency. Why is this guarantee so important and why do you need carrier provided MPLS-service to get it? In MPLS-networks handoffs are eliminated or minimized thus reducing packet loss.

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CATO Networks

DECEMBER 20, 2017

Todays businesses have vastly different internet connectivity requirements than those from even just a few years ago. In global markets, finding a way to achieve a safe, reliable network connection has become critical for any business looking to stay relevant, competitive, and secure. But current options leave much to be desired.

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CATO Networks

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

In short, SD-WAN aims to remove the constraints of legacy connectivity technologies, namely MPLS and the unmanaged public Internet , ushering a new age of flexible, resilient and secure networks. As such, SD-WANs impact on the substantial ongoing IT investment in MPLS is limited. Enter SD-WAN.

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Packet Pushers

JANUARY 26, 2022

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast we talk with sponsor Singtel, a global provider of network services. We dive into the services Singtel provides, including Internet, MPLS, IP transit 4G/5G, and why you might want to consider Singtel for cloud connectivity. Our guest is Mark Seabrook, Global Solutions Manager at Singtel.

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 17, 2021

You probably know what WAN stands for, but what about all of the other acronyms and abbreviations in the networking world? SASE SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) converges network and security functionalities into a single cloud-based solution. According to Gartner that coined the term, SASE is the future of network security.

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CATO Networks

DECEMBER 18, 2023

If you are used to managed MPLS services, transitioning to Internet last-mile access as part of SD-WAN or SASE might cause some concern. How can enterprises ensure they are getting a reliable network if they are not promised end-to-end SLAs? When done right, performance can exceed MPLS performance without the cost or complexity.

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MPLS Network Networking SASE 52

CATO Networks

MARCH 20, 2023

Network outages are possible; however, how rapidly the network recovers with minimal disruption to the business is what matters most. Network redundancy is designed to limit the risk of a network outage halting business operations. If the provider suffers an outage or degraded performance, so does the company.

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CATO Networks

DECEMBER 24, 2019

A recent conversation with a WAN engineer got me thinking about how network optimization techniques have changed over the years. Fortunately, Cato Cloud offers enterprises a suite of network optimization tools that can. But how do these network optimization techniques work and what can they do for your WAN?

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CATO Networks

AUGUST 23, 2016

We recently held a webinar focused on educating network professionals about Firewall as a Service (FWaaS). At the beginning of this webinar, we asked the audience what is your biggest challenge running distributed network security today? Backhaul traffic through the company datacenter and exit to the internet from a central location.

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Firewall Network Security Network Networking 52

CATO Networks

JUNE 1, 2020

Often, when speaking with network managers responsible for infrastructure within a multinational or global enterprise, I hear first-hand accounts of the impact of sluggish network performance. Similarly, slow networks can lead to painfully slow file transfers for large media files or CAD (computer-aided design). The solution?

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Kentik

MARCH 26, 2018

SD-WANs are the confluence of four technology trends: software-defined networking in wide area networks (WANs), commodity hardware for customer premise equipment, Internet connectivity for business applications, and enterprise IT hybrid multi-cloud migration.

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CATO Networks

JANUARY 2, 2022

The networking industry loves a good buzzword as much as any other IT sector. Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) certainly fits that billing. The term has been around for at least a decade has come back in vogue to describe networking purchased on a subscription basis. Gartner identifies the specific attributes of a cloud service.

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