There is no doubt that SD-WAN has been one of the most preferred networking technology for enterprises and service providers, and in fact, the growth has expanded not only for office settings, but also in outdoor environments. In recent years, various sectors including entertainment, public events, medical and logistics, have installed A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) hardware and software to enhance user experience, and these require better outdoor connectivity.
Background
There is no doubt that SD-WAN has been one of the most preferred networking technology for enterprises and service providers, and in fact, the growth has expanded not only for office settings, but also in outdoor environments. In recent years, various sectors including entertainment, public events, medical and logistics, have installed A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) hardware and software to enhance user experience, and these require better outdoor connectivity.
SD-WAN is considered as the preferred solution over traditional WAN for outdoor setting as it overcomes the limitations by offering Zero-Touch Provisioning, agility, simplified management, and enhanced performance, allowing zero-touch deployment in temporary sites and outdoor environments. Thus, outdoor SD-WAN has become the preferred solution over installations of FTTx, GPON and xDSL where the wiring can be complicated and difficult. In other words, mobile broadband enhancement by SD-WAN is the solution.
Requirements
The outdoor SD-WAN hardware is more demanding than the devices deployed in office setting, particularly some old buildings or remote sites without reliable signal coverage. Therefore, a mobile communication equipment expert from Middle East came to Lanner to co-develop a wide-temperature white-box gateway to enhance the connectivity for mobile broadband, deployed to provide load-balance and reliable connection.
Wide temperature and fanless
The outdoor environment is more demanding than the branch office and thus there are more physical requirements. For instance, wide operating temperature, fanless design and electronic equipment enclosure are typically required for outdoor deployments.
Wireless connectivity
As mentioned, wireless connectivity is key to the success in outdoor SD-WAN infrastructure. Therefore, the white-box hardware shall provide multiple connectivity module installations, such as M.2 with both USB3.0 and SATA signals, Nano-SIM card reader, and Mini-PCIe sockets.
Server grade micro-processor
Open architecture and small footprint server-grade processor provide efficient performance, power consumption and space considerations, which are critical for outdoor SD-WAN.
Hardware-assisted crypto engine
Security remains on top of priority when deploying SD-WAN. In order to accelerate the cryptographic analytics, it is recommended that the white-box hardware is built in with a crypto engine supporting up to 10Gbps
Multiple network interface
Networking I/Os, including Gigabit RJ45 and Fiber SFP ports, allow multiple connectivity in a WAN infrastructure.
Lanner Solution
In this joint development, Lanner presented NCR-1510, a wide temperature uCPE/SD-WAN appliance to run the optimized and virtualized mobile broadband VNF (virtualized network function) and software-defined WAN in outdoor environment.
Powered by Intel® Atom™ C3000 processor (Intel® Atom™ C), Lanner’s NCR-1510 offers comprehensive security for WAN infrastructure. For example, NCR-1510 comes with new secure instruction set (AES-NI) and Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) with performance boost to handle high throughput encryption up to 10Gbps.
NCR-1510 is Lanner’s flagship micro server with wide operating temperature to be deployed as outdoor SD-WAN uCPE gateway. NCR-1510 can remain normally functional in the defined temperature range between -40°C to +70°C. To further secure the outdoor operation, NCR-1510 can be installed with electronic equipment enclosure to protect it from inclement weather.