- Control-plane
- Cisco vSmart is the centralized controller that provides the control-plane functions within the SD-WAN domain.
- The controller is a software image that runs as a virtual machine or software container.
- The controller does not lie in the users’ data path and does not handle any service traffic (hence the control plane is separated from the data plane).
- vSmart uses the Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) to communicate control-plane information with WAN Edge devices.
- The controller distributes the following control-plane information:
- Reachability information (vRoutes, TLOCs);
- Security information (Encryption Keys);
- Service routes (Firewall/IDS);
- Policies across the fabric (App-route, Data Policies, VPN Membership, etc.);
- cEdges do not directly exchange any control plane between themselves. Everything goes through vSmart!