Fortigate SD-WAN is an intelligent traffic management technology that can dynamically select the optimal path among multiple WAN links based on performance metrics such as latency, jitter, packet loss, and bandwidth utilization. It supports application awareness, load balancing, and automatic failover (SLA tracking) to improve the transmission quality of critical applications and network reliability. Configuration is usually done in the SD-WAN zone or SD-WAN rules, rather than defining each policy individually.

Policy-based routing (PBR) is a traditional method where traffic is forwarded according to administrator-defined rules based on source address, destination address, service type, etc., with higher-priority policies overriding default routes. It is suitable for static or manual control of specific traffic but lacks dynamic link performance awareness and intelligent application scheduling. SD-WAN features include multi-link utilization, application awareness, dynamic path selection, link health monitoring, and automatic failover, while policy routing features are precise control, simplicity, and specific traffic matching, but without dynamic or intelligent optimization.