Modern businesses often operate across multiple sites, requiring reliable, secure, and high-performance networking between offices, data centres, and remote locations. Multisite networking solutions provide the infrastructure and routing capabilities needed to ensure seamless communication, centralised resource access, and consistent service delivery across all locations.
At the core of multisite networking are topologies, inter-site routing, and secure tunnelling technologies that allow businesses to optimise connectivity while maintaining security, performance, and scalability.
Centralises connectivity through a primary hub, simplifying management and security for branch offices while ensuring consistent access to shared resources.
Provides direct links between all sites, maximising redundancy and performance for latency-sensitive applications or high-priority inter-office communication.
Secure site-to-site communication using IPsec or WireGuard, ensuring encrypted, reliable, and policy-driven connectivity across public or private networks.
Advanced overlay technologies allow Layer 2 extension over Layer 3 networks, while MPLS provides private, high-performance WAN links for predictable latency and optional SLA-backed reliability.
Hub-and-Spoke
The hub-and-spoke topology connects multiple branch sites to a central hub, typically a corporate head office or primary data location. All traffic between branches flows through the hub, which simplifies network management, centralises security policies, and enables easy monitoring. Hub-and-spoke is ideal for businesses with a clear central location and multiple branch offices requiring consistent access to shared services.
Full Mesh
A full mesh topology provides direct connections between all sites, reducing latency and avoiding single points of failure. While more complex to deploy and manage, full mesh networks offer high redundancy and optimal performance, particularly for latency-sensitive applications or geographically dispersed offices with multiple high-priority communication paths.
Hybrid Topologies
Many modern networks adopt hybrid approaches, combining hub-and-spoke for smaller branches with full mesh interconnections between primary sites. This balances cost, redundancy, and performance for businesses with diverse site requirements.
Efficient routing is critical for multisite networks. Businesses often employ advanced protocols such as BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to dynamically manage inter-site traffic, optimise path selection, and provide resilience in multi-carrier or multi-link environments. BGP allows organisations to implement policy-based routing, failover mechanisms, and efficient traffic distribution across multiple WAN connections.
For simpler deployments, static routes or OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) may also be used, particularly when fewer sites or less dynamic routing is required.
Secure connectivity between sites is a fundamental requirement. Modern multisite networks typically utilise VPN technologies to encrypt traffic and protect data in transit:
IPsec VPN: A widely supported standard providing strong encryption and authentication between sites. Ideal for connecting offices over public internet links while maintaining confidentiality and integrity.
WireGuard: A modern VPN protocol offering simplified configuration, high performance, and strong cryptography. WireGuard is particularly effective for low-latency inter-site connectivity and cloud or hybrid deployments.
VPNs can be deployed in hub-and-spoke or full mesh arrangements depending on the network topology, with site-to-site or hub-to-branch tunnels tailored to business requirements.
VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN)
VXLAN is a tunnelling protocol that allows Layer 2 networks to be extended over Layer 3 infrastructure. It enables large-scale multitenant or distributed LAN deployments, allowing sites to share VLANs or subnets securely and efficiently across WAN links. VXLAN is particularly useful for connecting data centre networks or consolidating VLANs across multiple offices.
MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)
MPLS provides a private, high-performance WAN service with guaranteed QoS and predictable latency. While MPLS has historically been the standard for enterprise multisite connectivity, its adoption is gradually being complemented or replaced by SD-WAN and IPsec/VXLAN-based solutions due to flexibility, cost, and cloud integration advantages. MPLS still offers value where deterministic performance and strict SLA guarantees are required.
