Data policy governs which aspects of traffic in the SD-WAN overlay?

• A. Path selection, shaping, and SLA-based actions
• B. Route advertisement only
• C. Physical link selection
• D. IP addressing only

Answer: (A)

Data policies in an SD-WAN overlay govern how user traffic is treated across the network. They determine which path the traffic takes, how the traffic is shaped or prioritized, and what actions are taken to meet service-level objectives.

Path selection is about choosing the best available transport for a given flow (for example, routing certain apps over the lowest-latency link while keeping bulk traffic on cheaper paths). Shaping and QoS control how much bandwidth a flow or class of traffic can use, and how different classes are prioritized, ensuring critical applications get the performance they need. SLA-based actions enforce performance targets—if latency, jitter, or packet loss breach thresholds, the policy can trigger changes such as rerouting, altering priority, or applying different rate limits to maintain agreed service levels.

The other options describe aspects that aren’t about how traffic is treated inside the overlay. Route advertisement is a control-plane activity, not a data-policy action. Physical link selection is encompassed by path selection but data policies aren’t limited to choosing a single physical link. IP addressing is separate from traffic handling and does not define how traffic is managed across the overlay.