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SD-WAN - Data Plane

The Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN data plane is responsible for tunnel establishment and data forwarding within the fabric.

The main characteristics of the data plane with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Edge routers are as follows:

  • Provides secure data plane with other WAN Edge routers
  • Establishes a secure control plane with SD-WAN Controllers (via OMP)
  • Implements data plane and application-aware routing policies
  • Exports performance statistics
  • Uses traditional routing protocols such as OSPFv2 and v3, BGP, EIGRP, RIPv2, and VRRP
  • Supports Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and Cisco plug-and-play (PnP)
  • Physical and virtual form factor
  • The WAN Edge are the routers positioned everywhere that the Catalyst SD-WAN fabric must be extended to.
  • They are responsible for encrypting and decrypting application traffic between the sites.
  • WAN Edge routers establish a control plane relationship with the SD-WAN Controller to exchange pertinent information required to establish the fabric and learn centrally provisioned policies.
  • Data plane and application-aware routing policies are implemented on the WAN Edge routers.

  • WAN Edge routers export performance statistics, alerts, and events to the centralized Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager for a single point of management.

  • WAN Edge routers use standards-based OSPFv2, OSPFv3, RIPv2 and BGP routing protocols and EIGRP for learning reachability information from service-side (LAN) interfaces and for brownfield integration with non-SD-WAN sites.
  • WAN Edge routers include a very mature full-stack routing implementation, accommodating simple, moderate, and complex routed environments.
  • For Layer 2 redundant service-side (LAN) interfaces, WAN Edge routers implement VRRP first-hop redundancy protocol, which can operate on a per-VLAN basis.
  • WAN Edge routers can be brought online in a full zero-touch deployment or by requiring administrative approval.

  • Zero-touch deployment, using either ZTP or Cisco PnP, relies on signed certificates installed in the onboard Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to establish a unique router identity.

Cisco WAN Edge routers are highly flexible and are deployed across both physical and virtual form factors.

Form Factor Deployment Platforms & Environments Supported Hypervisors
Physical Hardware

Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) 1000 Series

Cisco ISR 4000 Series

Cisco Catalyst 8000 Series Edge Platforms

Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 Series

Cisco Catalyst 8200 uCPE Router

 Not Applicable (Bare-Metal Hardware)
Virtual Appliances

Public Clouds: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV): Cisco 5000 Series Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS)

Enterprise Compute: Cisco Cloud Services Platform (CSP)
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