Anapaya EDGE/SCION vs. other technologies

To fully appreciate the strategic value of Anapaya EDGE and SCION, it is crucial to position them correctly within the landscape of existing enterprise networking technologies, primarily MPLS and SD-WAN.

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

MPLS has long been the gold standard for reliable enterprise WAN connectivity. It offers predictable performance, low latency, and high reliability by creating private, dedicated paths across a service provider's network. However, its strengths come with significant trade-offs:

• Flexibility and vendor lock-in: MPLS networks are notoriously rigid and slow to provision. They are typically provided by a single telecommunications provider, and establishing connectivity between the networks of two different MPLS providers is complex and expensive. This creates significant vendor lock-in. SCION, by contrast, is designed as an open, Internet-like ecosystem with multiple interoperating providers, offering resilience against the failure of any single provider.
• Security and control: While MPLS provides traffic isolation, it does not have true path control. Security is based on the privacy of the provider's network, not on cryptographic verification. SCION and the Anapaya EDGE provide both cryptographic path validation and optional EDGE-to-EDGE encryption, offering a higher level of verifiable security. Furthermore, SCION's security and control are not dependent on traffic isolation provided by a single provider and thus can be extended across multiple providers.
• Ecosystem connectivity: MPLS networks are closed networks using a single provider, making it almost impossible to interconnect different organizations of an ecosystem. Up to now, the only other alternative has been to rely on the public Internet. Anapaya EDGE and SCION's open architecture and flexibility enable seamless interconnection and collaboration across diverse organizational boundaries.

Internet + Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A standard site-to-site VPN over the public Internet is a common way to establish secure connectivity at a low cost. It creates an encrypted tunnel between two points, protecting data in transit. However, this approach has significant limitations compared to SCION:

• Underlying Insecurity: Like SD-WAN, a VPN tunnel is an overlay on the public Internet. It inherits all of the Internet's risks. While the data inside the tunnel is encrypted, the connection's availability is dependent on the unpredictable performance of the Internet and the tunnel endpoints are still vulnerable to DDoS attacks and vulnerability exploitation.
• No Path Control: A VPN has no control over the path its traffic takes across the Internet. The packets are subject to the same "best-effort" routing as any other Internet traffic, leading to potential performance issues and a lack of data sovereignty.
• Performance and Reliability: Internet-based VPNs suffer from unpredictable performance, with no service level agreements (SLAs) for latency or packet loss. Connection drops are common, and failover is not seamless. Using SCION, the Anapaya EDGE provides reliable, high-performance connectivity with instant failover.
• Management Complexity: While simple for a few sites, managing a large network of point-to-point VPN tunnels becomes extremely complex and error-prone, lacking the centralized management of more advanced solutions.

Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN)

SD-WAN has emerged as a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to MPLS. It uses a centralized controller to intelligently manage and route traffic across multiple transport links, such as commodity broadband, 4G/5G, and even MPLS. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) extends this concept by integrating networking and cloud-delivered security services. However, SD-WAN has fundamental limitations:

• Underlay dependency: SD-WAN is an overlay technology. When it uses the public Internet as its transport, it builds its secure tunnels (typically IPsec VPNs) on top of the BGP-based Internet. This means it inherits all of the underlying security flaws of the Internet. It can intelligently choose the best available insecure path, but it cannot make an insecure path secure.
• Limited path control: An SD-WAN controller can choose which "last-mile" Internet connection to use (e.g., broadband vs. 5G), but it has no visibility or control over the "middle mile"—the path the data takes across the Internet's core. The data is still subject to BGP hijacking and unpredictable routing. SCION, as an underlay, provides true, end-to-end path control across the entire journey.
• Lack of inherent security: SD-WAN's security is a bolted-on layer of encryption. SCION's security is inherent to its architecture, with built-in resistance to routing attacks and DDoS.

	Anapaya EDGE/SCION	MPLS	Internet + VPN	SD-WAN
Path Control	✅ Full End-to-End path selection and verification by the sender.	⚠️ Pre-defined, static paths within a single provider's network. No user control.	❌ Follows unpredictable, best-effort public Internet routing.	⚠️ First-hop/last-mile selection. No control over the "middle mile" of the Internet.
Security Model	✅ Inherent security by design. Cryptographic path validation prevents hijacking. DDoS prevention via reduced attack surface.	✅ Private and isolated, but lacks inherent encryption. Security is based on isolation, not cryptography.	⚠️ Overlay security (encrypted tunnel). Inherits all security flaws of the underlying public Internet.	⚠️ Overlay security (VPN tunnels). Inherits all security flaws of the underlying public Internet.
Reliability	✅ Sub-second failover with multipathing.	✅ Predictable performance with SLAs within a single provider network.	❌ Unpredictable performance, no SLAs, subject to public Internet congestion and outages.	⚠️ Improved via multi-link management. Can steer traffic away from failing links, but still dependent on public Internet quality.
Multi-Provider	✅ Natively multi-provider, designed as an open ecosystem. Resilient to single provider failure.	❌ Primarily single-provider. Inter-provider connections are complex and expensive.	✅ Can connect any two Internet-enabled points.	⚠️ Transport-agnostic. Can use multiple Internet providers, but all paths are over the same insecure Internet.
Flexibility	✅ Paths can be changed dynamically. New connections are simple to establish.	❌ Static, rigid infrastructure. Provisioning new circuits is slow and costly.	⚠️ High for simple setups, but management becomes complex and manual at scale.	✅ Centralized management allows for agile policy changes and rapid site deployment.
Cloud Readiness	✅ Virtual appliances for AWS/Azure provide direct, secure cloud access.	❌ Backhauling cloud traffic through a central datacenter adds latency and cost.	⚠️ Can connect to cloud, but often inefficiently backhauled. Lacks intelligent optimization.	✅ Designed for direct cloud access and optimized performance for SaaS applications.
Cost	✅ Cost-effective, especially for secure ecosystems. Reduces long-term security overhead.	❌ Relies on expensive, dedicated private circuits.	✅ Leverages cost-effective commodity broadband Internet connections.	⚠️ Leverages cost-effective commodity broadband Internet connections, but private lines remain expensive.
Primary Weakness	Newer technology, requiring ecosystem growth and adoption.	Lack of flexibility, high cost, and vendor lock-in.	Unpredictable performance, no path control, and inherits all of the Internet's security flaws.	Lack of underlying security/reliability and true path control.