Network operators in industries like oil and gas, utilities, and manufacturing need a central way to connect branch offices and transmit data from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors.
With many IIoT devices operating in remote areas, software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) allow industrial organizations to choose the best path to transmit IIoT data. These remote paths could be over a broadband connection or cellular networks such as 2G, 3G, 4G, or 5G. SD-WAN also allows IIoT networks to reduce latency as it steers traffic toward a 5G path, says Anupam Upadhyaya, vice president of product management for network security at Palo Alto Networks.
