What Are the Benefits of a 5G LAN?
5G LAN is a private cellular network solution for enterprises. The benefits of 5G LAN include the following:
- Seamless integration into an organizations’ existing L2/3 network
- High speed, high capacity, and low latency wireless connectivity
- Network slicing capabilities for app and device-level QoS
- Centralized network management and operations
What Is a 5G LAN?
Before we can understand 5G LAN benefits, we’ll first need to understand what a 5G LAN is.5G LAN architecture combines the reliability and control of a traditional wireless LAN with the scale and performance of 5G cellular. For the first time, enterprise companies can design and build their own private mobile networks that seamlessly integrate with their existing IT infrastructure and business applications. Below are some of the primary components responsible for many 5G LAN benefits.
How Are 5G LANs Different from Other Networks?
5G LANs use a combination of technology to provide the best of traditional LANs and 5G networking. In a wired LAN environment, organizations have total control over their network through their firewalls, switches, and QoS / security policy settings.
The scale of this network is constrained by its wired cables and fiber backhaul. Many industries that require high availability are reluctant to untether from their Ethernet connections. Industrial, energy, and healthcare applications must continuously meet a certain level of performance and uptime.
Commercial 5G helps overcome these limitations at the expense of your control over cellular resources. Many times commercial data plans include overage fees or data throttling, which can grind networks to a halt during peak traffic times.
Commercial carriers do not design their macro cellular networks customized to the needs of different enterprise network environments and internal applications. This means ensuring interoperability, creating seamless integrations, and setting application-specific service-level agreements are not possible.
5G LAN architecture was designed to solve these problems in a way that caters to the private enterprise. Organizations own their cellular infrastructure and hardware, allowing for purposeful design and guaranteed coverage.
5G signals support wired-like reliability, speed, latency, and throughput. This allows enterprises to confidently scale their applications and expand without impacting their performance. Since 5G LANs are controlled from inside the company, administrators can set specific service level objectives to each of their applications.
Lastly, cloud networking and software defined principles that are part of 5G LAN deployments automate many aspects of the network. Automated device provisioning, self-healing connections, and application-aware policies not only save administrators time but also allow the enterprises to scale faster than ever before.
5G LAN Benefits
With the basics covered, let’s explore some specific 5G LAN benefits that enterprises can expect to see in their network.
Reliability
Administrators have full control over their cellular resources allowing them to ensure their applications always meet a specific level of service, even during high-traffic times. 5G wireless signals provide the best combination of low-latency and high-bandwidth service that can reliably serve high density of devices simultaneously.
Scalability
5G LAN architecture leverages an software defined approach to accelerate radio and application innovation. Plug-and-play access point (AP) hardware for cellular wireless coverage also enables IT staff to quickly launch their private mobile network without the need of a cellular network expert.
5G signals can easily span tens of thousands of feet from a single access point indoors or broadcast to very large outdoor areas across several millions of square feet of coverage.
Network administrators and IT leaders can leverage 5G LANs’ self-organizing network features to automatically provision new device groups and applications - as part of new digital initiatives - to match required service level objectives.
Lastly, administrators can synchronize their existing QoS and network access policy configurations from their existing local area network (LAN) to their 5G LAN to apply an appropriate level of performance without having to design rules from scratch.
Deterministic and Low Latency
Latency is simply the amount of time it takes for a data packet to reach its destination. High latency can cause lagging and delays that make some technology unusable. Certain applications such as autonomous mobile robots (AMR), computer vision sensors and remote controlled infrastructure all require low latency connectivity to work properly.
LTE can provide under 40 milliseconds (ms) of round-trip latency in a controlled environment, and 5G under 20 ms - and these values are deterministic even under congestion. This is a massive improvement to the several hundred millisecond speeds seen on existing enterprise wireless networks, especially under increasing traffic and user density. While this change might be unnoticeable in some environments, applications that automate critical business operations and rely on live data benefit greatly.
Control
5G LAN architecture allows for complete control of network resource utilization across device groups, application mix. It allows for data privacy and security via close alignment with existing enterprise network access rules. Administrators can design networks that suit their specific needs. For example, small cell radios built for private cellular connectivity within a 5G LAN can strategically provide coverage to industrial areas while outdoor access points fill in the dead zones across large campus locations with flexible design and deployment options.
Cost
In challenging environments, organizations using a 5G LAN design spend less on hardware for more coverage when compared to traditional approaches to enterprise wireless connectivity across commercial cellular and enterprise Wi-Fi. In the process, wired network infrastructure rollouts for indoor and outdoor locations can be rightsized, further improving total cost of ownership.
When enterprises own their cellular networks, they avoid costly overage, onboarding and management fees. The added control of the 5G LAN helps ensure service levels and dramatically reduces the chance of downtime that can cost enterprises hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Celona Solution
Celona enables enterprise organizations with their own 5G LAN deployments as a seamless turnkey solution.
Celona’s plug-and-play access point infrastructure can be quickly deployed throughout the facility, while proactive monitoring ensures network service level objectives, such as throughput and latency requirements, are consistently being met.
Celona uses cloud networking principles to make implementing 5G LANs an out-of-box experience. Onboarding can be done alongside existing wireless and IT infrastructure, without interrupting business operations.
If you’re trying to find the perfect match for your new generation of digital applications that depend on enterprise wireless connectivity, Celona can help. Check out our network planner to estimate the size of your 5G LAN on private cellular spectrum, or test-drive Celona’s unique solution for yourself with a free trial.
