After using 128 Technology’s version of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to connect four of its own data centers in Asia, NEC Networks and System Integration Corporation (Nesic) decided to resell the technology to its own 5,000 enterprise customers.

Nesic is the systems integration unit within NEC. Both Nesic and 128 Technology are marketing the product as SD-WAN because it solves the need to optimally connect WANs and data centers, securely. However, 128 Technology generally doesn't like to use the term "SD-WAN." 128 Technology doesn’t use tunnels or overlays. Instead it uses routing that is native to the network and is session-stateful.

“Because we segment all traffic down to sessions, we can have multiple views into those sessions’ performance and can start new sessions over different paths,” said Andy Ory, CEO of 128 Technology. “You may want to use multiple connections and spread your traffic over those paths but not without sessions because then you can’t determine which paths are performing better than others.”

SD-WAN isn’t a routed solution and uses tunnels and overlays to route traffic where it can’t be routed natively, said Ory. Tunnels only allow connectivity between point A and point B, which makes the technology vendor specific. On the other hand, 128 Technology’s software can be deployed on any standard router, server, or data center and segments traffic down to individual sessions for visibility.

Nesic used 128 Technology to interconnect its data centers and realized that it could solve the same WAN and data center problems for its own customers. 128’s routing service will be used to connect Nesic customers’ data centers and WANs just like an SD-WAN solution would. Nesic provides the Internet connectivity and management of the service as well.

“While we market this as an SD-WAN solution, it’s important to understand that we are session-based routing, and SD-WAN is a use case, not an architecture,” Ory said.

The Burlington, Massachusetts-based startup was founded in 2014 and has raised $57 million to date.