In SD-WAN control planes, which statement best describes centralized control versus distributed control?

• A. Centralized control uses a single orchestrator for policy and path decisions; distributed control pushes some decisions to edge devices for local responsiveness, though MEF favors centralized consistency.
• B. Centralized control uses edge devices exclusively; distributed control uses a cloud orchestrator.
• C. They are completely interchangeable with no impact on policy deployment.
• D. Centralized control eliminates the need for any edge processing.

Answer: (A)

In SD-WAN, control can be centralized or distributed. Centralized control means one orchestrator makes the policy decisions and computes the paths for the whole network, giving a single source of truth and consistent policy enforcement across all edge devices. But to stay responsive to local conditions, some decisions can be pushed down to the edge devices, allowing them to act quickly for things like local failover or immediate path selection without waiting for the central controller. This combination preserves global policy consistency while improving local responsiveness. MEF generally favors centralized consistency, but still recognizes the value of edge-enabled local decisions for performance and resilience.