Recent technical advances in cellular wireless with newly available unlicensed spectrum could create the perfect storm for enterprises needing predictable performance for essential business applications.
Widely viewed as the most significant development in enterprise networking since the introduction of Wi-Fi, the FCC recently authorized the full use of a new wireless spectrum for LTE and 5G cellular wireless technology without expensive licensing fees and restrictions. The move will most likely transform the enterprise wireless market for decades and represents a large leap in the FCC’s race to 5G.
Armed with this new spectrum and technology to exploit it, companies are actively looking to build their own private LTE/5G private networks to support business-critical applications that can no longer tolerate the deficiencies inherent in conventional Wi-Fi technology.
While by no means a replacement for Wi-Fi, the recent accessibility of 4G/5G technology for the enterprise effectively eliminates many of the headaches that IT departments face in trying to deliver wireless mobility while delivering wire-like performance and reliability.
Enter CBRS
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), is a 150 megahertz-wide swath of wireless capacity within the 3.55-3.7 GHz band in the United States.
CBRS is governed by a three-tiered spectrum authorization framework to accommodate a variety of commercial uses on a shared basis with incumbent federal and non-federal users of the band in the US. Access and operations is managed by a dynamic spectrum access system (SAS) operated by several certified SAS providers such as Google, Federated Wireless and CommScope.
The CBRS Three-Tiered Framework. Source: Federated Wireless
Unlike Wi-Fi, CBRS technology is essentially interference free and does not rely on the same first come, first served access control method (i.e. CSMA/CA). Access to the wireless medium is completely scheduled and coordinated by the infrastructure and not arbitrarily decided by client devices.
What’s more, 4G/5G cellular technology provides 5 to 10 times the wireless coverage over conventional enterprise alternatives. A single indoor cellular access point, for instance, can easily cover 100,000 square feet or more of space, while an outdoor cellular AP can reach ranges of a mile or more. This means fewer access points and lower capital costs to cover much larger areas with more predictable performance. Device support for 4G/5G technology is also hitting critical mass.
Apple, Google, Samsung, HP, Lenovo and many others already offer CBRS support directly within their devices. This includes smartphones such as Google’s Pixel 3 and 4, Samsung Galaxy S10, Apple iPhone 11/SE, iPad Pro with more hitting the market every day.
Historically, using cellular wireless has meant enterprises must often enter into costly and cumbersome contracts with operators or managed services providers who control the infrastructure and the enterprise’s data running over it.
With the use of emerging private 4G/5G technology organizations can now deploy their own private mobile network that they own and operate without expensive spectrum licenses or being directly tied to specific carrier for everything.
Why now?
Wireless connectivity and user/device mobility have become a de facto requirement for companies across every industry. Still, IT staff have struggled to overcome inherent technical problems such as intermittent interference, media contention, latency and roaming issues that have prohibited them from running essential apps over conventional wireless technology.
In stark contrast, cellular technology overcomes these common enterprise wireless concerns - allowing organizations to explicitly define and enforce strict latency, packet loss and throughput rules for any application over the air and through the existing L2/L3 network.
And because client access is coordinated, scheduled and controlled by the infrastructure, devices no longer fight or contend for access to the media. This eliminates huge IT headaches in dealing with erratic client behavior and connectivity issues that hamper productivity and consume valuable IT time and resources to troubleshoot and mitigate.
Frictionless integration is key
Contrary to conventional wisdom, 5G is more than merely a new wireless protocol. It is an entirely new cloud-native, software-driven architecture for all network services that includes the radio access network (RAN), core network services and the operational model for orchestrating it all.
Consequently, one of the biggest concerns that enterprises face is how best to integrate this new technology within their existing network and IT framework.
Recent technical innovations have brought to market a new class of cloud-based software platforms designed specifically for enterprises that make deploying and operating a private 4G/5G network as simple as or even simpler than Wi-Fi.
The turnkey technology help by combining all the radio access, core and orchestration elements within a single solution that can be deployed much like conventional wireless LANs.
As a simple overlay to existing IT infrastructure, these systems combine indoor and outdoor access points, a 4G/5G core (read controller) and cloud-based orchestration that leverages AI and machine learning techniques to help automate operation.
One of the keys to the integration of 4G/5G technology with existing enterprise network architecture is the ability to define and enforce quality of service (QoS) parameters from end to end. In the cellular world network slicing is designed to achieve this.
5G network slicing is a network architecture that enables the multiplexing of virtualized and independent logical networks on the same physical network infrastructure. Each network slice is an isolated end-to-end network tailored to fulfil diverse requirements requested by a particular application. This is great for carriers but not enough for the enterprise.
For the enterprise, this network slicing concept has been extended to what is being dubbed “microslicing.”
Microslicing uses sophisticated software to automate the mapping, enforcement and tracking of essential service levels such as latency, jitter, packet error rates and throughput per application across the entire infrastructure.
Microslicing allows for the integration of QoS policies from the RAN across the enterprise L2/L3 infrastructure. Source: Celona.
As IT staff defines the required levels of services for each application, traffic is automatically tagged into the appropriate VLAN or user group policy pre-defined by existing network access control (NAC) systems. This has never before been possible and a one of the big reasons why IT staff has been reticent to migrate applications critical to the business over wireless.
Ultimately, predictable wireless performance is the holy grail for creating a truly intent-based enterprise network that can reliably support business-essential applications.
With the emergence of new unlicensed spectrum and enterprise-focused technology to exploit it, enterprises can now easily build their own private LTE/5G networks that deliver the range, reach and reliability that is no longer negotiable for their business.
