Patent ID: 11870691
Assignee: CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 14:
15. A method comprising:
maintaining, by an edge network device of a plurality of edge network devices, one or more tunnel-based overlays over a communication network to one or more remote edge network devices of the plurality of edge network devices,
wherein the communication network comprises two or more physical provider networks, and
wherein each of the plurality of edge network devices are part of a first enterprise network and provide access via the one or more tunnel-based overlays to resources hosted at one or more sites associated with the first enterprise network;

applying, at the edge network device, one or more firewall functions to network traffic received via one or more network interfaces of the edge network device;
receiving, by the edge network device, a plurality of policies from a central network controller,
wherein at least one of the plurality of policies is an overlay network policy comprising a first mapping between a first particular application and one of the one or more tunnel-based overlays, and
wherein at least one of the plurality of policies is a domain-based policy defining a mapping between one or more application traffic types and a direct internet access path across the communication network to one or more service domains that are not part of the first enterprise network; and

routing the network traffic received at the edge network device based on the plurality of policies,
wherein the domain-based policy is operative to cause the edge network device to route selected network traffic on the direct internet access path outside of the first enterprise network to the one or more service domains, and
wherein the overlay network policy is operative to cause the edge network device to route the selected network traffic on a corresponding tunnel-based overlay.