Gilat Telecom Enhances SD-WAN System To Unlock Huge Network Availability and Bandwidth Capacity Across Africa

Gilat Telecom recently announced significant new enhancements to its Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN MAX). The news is particularly relevant for African operators with fiber and satellite networks that are aiming to markedly increase network availability and bandwidth.

Gilat Telecom is the first company in the world to have developed an SD-WAN solution for both satellite and fiber traffic. The new SD-WAN enhancements center around the integration of technology from F5 that enables complex traffic management decisions based on client, server, or application status. Gilat Telecom is also leveraging F5’s event-driven scripting language, which is key to addressing application delivery challenges across any environment.

The integration of F5 makes it even easier for Gilat Telecom to intelligently manage network traffic, including building smart monitors that sample various network components. Depending on the samples, it is possible to change the traffic path, save bandwidth, improve performance, and perform bandwidth control. Additional traffic management and bandwidth optimisations are driven by AI and machine-learning algorithms.

“Our SD-WAN MAX solution enables MNOs, ISPs and enterprises across Africa to achieve more capacity from less hardware and software. The integration of F5’s software is one of a number of improvements we have made in response to suggestions from our customers and partners. We are confident that our SD-WAN MAX is the best available on the market,” said Amir Cohen, CTO of Gilat Telecom.

Meeting the needs of African MNOs, ISPs and Enterprises by improving its SD-WAN MAX system, Gilat Telcom now has more scope than ever before to specifically address the needs of African MNOs, ISPs and enterprises.

Most MNOs and ISPs in Africa use both satellite and fiber networks to maximise coverage creating asymmetric traffic routes with end-customers receiving traffic over satellite and sending over fiber.

Gilat Telecom’s SD-WAN lets service providers and MNOs centrally control the route that both satellite and fiber traffic takes to and from the customer. It ensures different applications – voice, streaming, caching (Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft cloud services etc) – can be identified with automatic prioritisation, and according to customer requirements. This enables the enterprise to save bandwidth – and money – and gives users faster connectivity.