New Training: Configure and Verify Service Chaining

In this 6-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Knox Hutchinson explains how to inject security services into routes in SD-WAN Watch this new networking training.

Watch the full course: Cisco CCNP Implementing Cisco SD-WAN Solutions

This training includes:

• 6 videos

• 16 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Introducing Service Chaining

• What Service Chaining Does

• Advertise a Service into the VPN

• Create a Centralized Control Policy

• Verify the Service Chain Policy

• Summarizing Service Chains

How the Service Chain Differs with SDN vs Traditional Networks

In the networking world, a service chain is the path in which data needs to flow through services to traverse in or out of a network. For example, if a customer makes a request to stream a video to their mobile device, that request may need to flow through the router, the firewall, the NAT service, through the load balancer, and finally making its stop at the storage server. Depending on how an IT infrastructure is configured, this could be highly inefficient.

Traditionally, the route that request takes must flow through each of those services whether they are needed or not. In the example above, even though that request may only need to hop through the firewall and load balancer, it will still need to pass through the NAT service, too. That means all hardware in a network must be scaled equally. That's because each stop in the chain needs to be able to handle all anticipated bandwidth flowing through the entire network. This model has the potential to waste both money and time.

On the other hand, with software-defined networking, requests can be intelligently routed only through the services it needs. That's because software-defined networks have a much broader view of the network architecture as a whole.