In theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)curriculum, understanding the visibility gap between the SD-WAN overlay and the transport underlay is a core competency. The provided exhibit illustrates a ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent deployed on aBranch Edge Routerperforming tests across two distinct paths:Internet(reaching a destination at 64.100.249.90) andMPLS(reaching a destination at 172.29.0.2).

According to the ENNA architecture guidelines, ThousandEyes is primarily utilized to provide hop-by-hop visibility into theunderlaynetwork. While SD-WAN controllers like vManage provide native monitoring for the overlay—the logical IPsec tunnels (Option B) that form the SD-WAN fabric—they often lack granular visibility into the physical service provider paths (the underlay) that carry those tunnels. The exhibit specifically highlights the agent probing the transport networks (Transport VPN0) directly, bypassing the overlay tunnels to measure the raw performance of the ISP and MPLS circuits.

By monitoring theunderlay(Option A), the engineer can identify if high latency or packet loss is caused by a specific hop within the service provider's infrastructure or at a peering point. This "underlay visibility" is critical for troubleshooting SD-WAN performance issues where the overlay may report a tunnel down, but the root cause lies in a BGP routing change or physical fiber cut in the provider network. ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents, natively integrated into Catalyst 8000 and ISR 4000 platforms, allow for this persistent underlay monitoring without additional hardware.

Overlay (Option C):While ThousandEyes can monitor overlay performance, the exhibit's focus on the raw IP addresses (Internet and MPLS) in the transport VPN indicates an underlay test.

IPsec/GRE Tunnels (Options B & D):These represent the transport mechanisms of the overlay. ThousandEyes probes the pathunderthese tunnels to ensure the transport health is sufficient to support the fabric.