Score two SD-WAN paths on latency, jitter and loss to see which one the policy engine should prefer.
Each impairment is weighted by how badly it damages interactive traffic, then subtracted from a perfect 100. Loss carries the heaviest weight because a single lost packet triggers a retransmit and a TCP window collapse, while a few extra milliseconds of latency are usually invisible. SD-WAN policies steer on thresholds, and a scoring model makes it obvious whether a brownout on the primary path is bad enough to justify moving voice onto the broadband circuit.
SD-WAN Path Selection
score = 100 − (0.6 × latency ms + 2.5 × jitter ms + 30 × loss %), clamped to 0–100; the higher score wins.
score = 100 − (0.6 × latency ms + 2.5 × jitter ms + 30 × loss %), clamped to 0–100; the higher score wins. Each impairment is weighted by how badly it damages interactive traffic, then subtracted from a perfect 100. Loss carries the heaviest weight because a single lost packet triggers a retransmit and a TCP window collapse, while a few extra milliseconds of latency are usually invisible.
SD-WAN policies steer on thresholds, and a scoring model makes it obvious whether a brownout on the primary path is bad enough to justify moving voice onto the broadband circuit.
This calculator takes 6 inputs: Path A latency, Path A jitter, Path A packet loss, Path B latency, Path B jitter, Path B packet loss. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.