The Connectivity Transformation Blog

CHICAGO – March 25, 2024 — Nitel, a leading network-as-a-service (NaaS) provider, announced today the acquisition of Cleveland-based WAN Dynamics. The move represents another step in Nitel’s growth strategy that was put in place a little over two years ago when international private equity firm Cinven made a significant investment in Nitel. Operating under the Nitel brand, the combined organization will strengthen Nitel’s overall positioning as a leader in customer-focused solutions and enable deeper technical, management, and support capabilities around its managed SD-WAN offering.

Recently I have been working more with network automation and using Arista Validated Designs (AVD), Ansible and Netbox. A somewhat common request that I encounter is being able to pull the Ansible inventory from Netbox. There is an Ansible plugin for this called “nb_inventory” to do this exact function. However, through my testing I have found a more preferable approach. I opt for executing an Ansible playbook with a GraphQL query, which then processes the output through a Jinja template to create the inventory file. This technique offers a significant advantage: in the event of a Netbox server outage or accessibility issues, the inventory remains usable for running Ansible playbooks until access to Netbox is restored. In the upcoming example, I’ll introduce additional logic tailored for environments using AVD. However, the approach can be easily adapted for scenarios involving only Ansible and Netbox. This article presumes the presence of functional Netbox and AVD environments which is out of scope for this post.

WAN Dynamics is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Netskope, a global leader in Secure Services Edge (SSE) & Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN). This collaboration aims to harness our combined expertise in SD-WAN, SASE, SSE, and ZTNA technologies, establishing the blueprint for the next-generation Wide Area Network.

It's always an exhilarating experience to see hard work, dedication, and visionary leadership get the recognition they deserve. Such is the case for WAN Dynamics as Inc Magazine has honored the company by naming it among the 5000 fastest-growing businesses in its annual Inc 5000 list. This accolade is no minor achievement, and in this blog post, we will delve into the significance of this recognition and what it means for WAN Dynamics.

In the fast-paced and interconnected world of technology, network engineers play a crucial role in ensuring seamless connectivity, efficient data transfer, and robust network performance. As the demands on networks continue to grow, the importance of well-designed and optimized network infrastructure becomes increasingly evident. Arista Validated Designs (AVD) have emerged as a revolutionary framework that is changing how network engineers work, enabling them to create and manage networks with unparalleled precision and efficiency.

WAN Dynamics has been named as one of the world’s premier managed service providers in the prestigious 2023 Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings.

As network operators, we often face the daunting task of troubleshooting duplicate IP addresses on the network. This is an age-old issue that can turn into a tedious and time-consuming process if not handled efficiently. Traditional troubleshooting methods involve pinging the IP address and checking the ARP cache on the switch. However, Arista switches, with their Linux foundations, offer a more streamlined approach - the use of the "arping" command.

The ever-evolving world of technology has seen some remarkable developments over the past few years, particularly in the realm of networking. One company at the forefront of these innovations is WAN Dynamics, a company that has been transforming the way businesses manage their network infrastructure in offices, datacenters and the cloud.

Our CTO Jason Gintert recently had a conversation with Lexie Cooper and Andy Lapteff on The Art of Network Engineering Podcast. Check out the wide ranging conversation covering SD-WAN, Internet Exchange Points, the United States Networking User Association and more in the embedded video below! You can find the audio version on your favorite podcatcher.