A field reference for engineers and integrators, from the wire to SD-WAN
Presented by West Networks For the Peplink Summit
A working reference. Each topic follows the same pattern: what it is, how it is generally implemented, and a short real-world note on why it matters. Every section closes with how the concept changes, or gets easier, in an SD-WAN world built on Peplink SpeedFusion.
How the Internet Actually Works
Before any single network makes sense, you have to understand the thing every network ultimately connects to. The internet is not a cloud in the sky. It is a physical,…
Read →IP Addressing & Subnetting
An IPv4 address is a 32-bit number, written as four decimal octets separated by dots, like 192.168.10.25. Each octet ranges from 0 to 255. Every device on an IP network…
Read →NAT, DHCP & DNS
NAT is the workaround that kept IPv4 alive. Because public addresses are scarce, NAT lets many devices on a private network share one (or a few) public addresses. When…
Read →Switching, VLANs & Spanning Tree
Layer 2 is where devices on the same local network actually talk to each other. At this layer, devices are identified not by IP address but by MAC address, a unique…
Read →Routing & Routing Protocols
Layer 3 is where traffic moves between different networks. A switch connects devices within a network; a router connects networks to each other and decides, for every…
Read →Firewalls, 802.1X & Zero Trust
A firewall enforces what traffic is allowed where. Its rules fall into two broad directions. Inbound rules control traffic coming from the outside toward your network,…
Read →WAN Links, VPNs & the Cloud
The WAN (Wide Area Network) is how a site connects beyond its own walls, to other sites, to the internet, to the cloud. The link types differ in speed, cost,…
Read →SD-WAN & SpeedFusion
Every preceding topic describes a piece of how networks work. SD-WAN (software-defined wide-area networking) is the layer that ties them together for the wide area.…
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