The digital transformation of the world extends to the physical infrastructure that runs our networks. Virtual routers are something that CIOs and CFO can get behind, because they make processes more streamlined, and they are more cost-effective than physical routers. Indeed, 5G standards require some shift to virtual routers. It’s important for businesses to put in place strategies to extend virtual routers to data centers.
What is a Virtual Router?
We live in an increasingly connected world in which we are increasingly connecting to the internet through mobile devices. The explosion in the number of devices creates a burden on physical routers to ensure that everyone who needs to be, is connected. Businesses cannot afford to keep up with the explosion in the demand for connectivity by spending on physical routers. Virtual routers are, to make things simpler, a bit like a mobile hotspot. A virtual router turns a computer or laptop into a router, and allows devices to connect to the internet without having to have a physical router. This is even more beneficial when you consider the number of devices that aren’t able to install virtual private network (VPN) software directly. Once you turn on your VPN, other devices can connect to the network, providing the devices with the VPN‘s protection.
Businesses are able to run virtual routers off of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. The costs of hosting a virtual router are much lower than the costs of having physical routers.
White-Box Solutions
White-box solutions are very difficult to execute, but when you do it right, it can have a tremendous impact on your business’ network. Businesses are able to save vast sums of money using generic white-box solutions, rather than physical routers and switches.
White-box solutions allow businesses to scale their ability to deliver connectivity, and enhance performance. One of the biggest issues that businesses face is their fear that router software will not have adequate support and the costs of integration may be too high. This is especially true when the software is open-source. It’s not necessarily true that open-source solutions are inherently inferior to commercial variants in terms of support, but you need a very large community to make open source work, and right now, we don’t have viable open-source solutions that get around the support issue.
Businesses have to be aware that although commercial virtual routers are cheaper than physical routers, the cost difference may not be as great as you imagined once you factor in server costs or white-box solutions.
Applications of Virtual Routers
The biggest application for virtual routers is with virtual networking, the most important of which is SD-WAN. Virtual networking implies that you overlay a network with on as well as off ramp features, to manage access. Vendors will typically offer virtual networking appliances, and the majority will have virtual routers you can use to host servers. What you get is a greater level of security: if a virtual router fails, another one can come up, as it were, to take over. This is much more secure than with a physical router where one going down has more material connectivity consequences.
We are living in the age of digital transformation and cloud computing has been essential to that transformation, and virtual routers are behind cloud computing services. If you want to have virtual networking and SD-WAN at the highest level, you will need to have a virtual router on a data center, to create cloud virtual routing. You have to make sure that you resolve compatibility issues between virtual routers and your virtual networks or SD-WAN technologies.
Businesses also need to collect an application’s cloud components in a private subnet and connect the subnet to the internet or your VPN.
Typically, your cloud provider will give private, in-cloud addresses for your applications, and may also allow you to see the on-ramp of any application. You may use a virtual router instead, which will be hosted like an app component, and whose instances may be deployed on-demand. The cloud will make this much more resilient and secure and faster.
Virtual routers are democratizing access to the internet by reducing access costs for satellite offices and campuses. Often, satellite offices and campus facilities do not need the same level of performance and traffic capacity as data centers. Because branches will have security applications, they can have virtual routers and edge computing on the same server.
It is advisable to use a single-server solution only for hosting virtual devices. You should avoid having your virtual router and business application on the same server. The reason is that doing so exposes your network to hacking, and it will increase the amount of maintenance you have to do keep your software running. The end result is that you will experience a lot of downtown for your network.
