What problem does Forward Error Correction (FEC) address in Cisco SD-WAN?

Forward Error Correction (FEC) in Cisco SD-WAN addresses reduced application performance caused by service degradation, specifically packet loss. FEC works by sending redundant data packets, allowing the receiving end to reconstruct lost packets without retransmission. This is crucial for real-time applications like voice and video, where retransmissions due to packet loss would introduce unacceptable delays and significantly degrade user experience. While FEC can increase bandwidth consumption, it effectively mitigates the impact of packet loss on application performance. Incorrect options: Applications with occasional invalid data input and poor performance: FEC does not validate data input; it corrects for lost packets. Traffic flows with increased delay over a particular transport: While FEC can help with delay caused by retransmissions, its primary function is packet loss recovery, not directly reducing inherent transport delay. Inefficient traffic forwarding caused by inbound shapers: FEC operates independently of traffic shaping mechanisms.