Open source SD-WAN vendor flexiWAN announced an integration with Clevernet's artificial intelligence-powered WAN optimization platform this week.

According to flexiWAN CTO Nir Ben Dvora, the partnership will allow its customers to enhance its platform with functionality not commonly found in SD-WAN products today: namely, WAN optimization. Clevernet's WAN optimization capabilities can be installed on existing infrastructure using a virtual machine alongside the core flexiWAN offering.

Clevernet uses machine learning to improve the performance of WAN links with what the company calls simultaneous multi-paths (SMP). Once Clevernet is deployed alongside flexiWAN, the platform begins analyzing all possible paths between two or more branch offices. Based on this analysis, traffic sent between the two branches is split up and sent across multiple routes, improving transmission times in the process, the companies claim.

The more WAN links — whether MPLS, broadband, or direct internet access — the more paths that the company’s SMP technology can establish and the greater the performance, according to the vendor.

“On average, Clevernet speeds up the internet by six times while also making it more reliable,” Clevernet CEO and CTO Mario Nemirovsky said in a statement.

Since jumping into the crowded SD-WAN space in 2019, flexiWAN has gained considerable momentum thanks in large part to telecom service provider buy in. Soon after entering the market, the company partnered with Telefónica to develop a proof-of-concept SD-WAN service designed to run on white-box CPE.

Its open source SD-WAN platform steadily picked up industry support over the last year and a half boosted by additional partnerships. Last June, it reached a deal with Prodapt for that vendor to sell flexiWAN's SD-WAN technology through its OpenVX vendor market. More recently, Enea and Nexcom announced plans to develop a SD-WAN kit using flexiWAN's technology. The kit is designed to ease the barrier to entry for system integrators and communications service providers.