By Roberto Lucarelli, Cradlepoint’s MSP Solution Architect Southern Europe
It’s hard to deny the benefits of 5G: high performance, accessibility and convenience. However, many IT managers still rely on MLPS connections because they provide a specific service level agreement or connection guarantee and because they feel that a cellular network cannot provide this same level of service. There is good news though. A new technology, in the form of 5G network slicing, is dramatically changing the connectivity landscape.
Network slicing is the ability to create differentiated end-to-end services over a single network connection. This means that service providers can offer end-to-end 5G connectivity assurance equivalent to the service level agreements enterprises have come to expect from MPLS service.
A report last October predicted that the network slicing market will generate revenues of approximately $12 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 50% between now and the end of the decade. In other words, it is a market destined to grow enormously.
How can companies effectively use these new connectivity options? For the correct implementation of this new technology, in order to address the use cases required by companies, it will be necessary to use SD-WAN solutions optimized for 5G. Let’s see better how all this will be possible.
A more accurate definition of Network Slicing
Let’s begin to see how network slicing will be possible. Slicing a network – at least the one that was cost-effective and done on a large scale – was considered a mostly theoretical concept until we started talking about standalone 5G (SA) implementations. Currently, non-standalone 5G radio access networks (NSAs) are stacked on top of an existing 4G/LTE core. Standalone 5G networks, which pair 5G radios with an independent 5G core, provide the ability to segment the radio, core, and transport network, so service providers can offer differentiated end-to-end network segments and meet new usages. homes.
Each differentiated network, or “slice,” will address requirements for a different category of applications.
As an example, the standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) define 4 categories of applications:
Ultra-reliable low latency – This category includes applications that need very reliable, low latency connectivity. Enhanced mobile broadband – This category includes applications that require a high-speed connection with low latency, such as broadcast video. Machine to machine communication – This category includes sensors, actuators and other IoT implementations. Public Safety – This category includes public sector, emergency services, and public safety applications.
The benefits of Network Slicing
Currently, many businesses use an MPLS link because it provides a reliable end-to-end connection. Service providers offer MPLS connections with agreed SLAs because their fiber implementations have guaranteed connection speeds and latency. However, since MPLS services use fiber connections, these services can be very expensive and above all they can take several months to be operational. One of the great benefits of 5G is the ability to create a high-speed connection in a short time and with limited resources, both in terms of personnel and in economic terms. With 5G network slicing, companies can provide their applications with a high quality connection with guaranteed SLAs.
Network slicing is the “game changer” for several use cases in all of the above categories. Let’s take the public safety sector, for example a police station. The headquarters obviously cannot connect to the vehicles via a cable connection. In addition, each car has its own connected technology: license plate readers, dash cams, body cams, radars. With network slicing, each car can connect to a dedicated and reliable network, made available by service providers with certain SLAs and certain tariffs. In the event of connectivity issues with headquarters, each vehicle is equipped with a secondary 5G modem that can access alternative networks to ensure 100% service resilience.
The role of SD-WAN in Network Slicing
For consumer users, network slicing can address only a few use cases, which concern social media, games or work applications such as Office 365 or Google Workspace, therefore a very specific set of applications. For this scenario, network slicing is managed using the URSP (User Equipment Route Selection Policy), a 3GPP standard: this policy allows the Service Provider to identify an application and dynamically assign it to a network slice.
In the case of companies, the use cases are much broader and address different strategic and business-related scenarios of the company, which requires the use of hundreds or even thousands of cloud-based applications, including standard SaaS applications, those on the cloud public and other custom applications on private cloud. In this scenario, a flexible solution such as software defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) is needed to direct application flows towards the correct network slicing with respect to the SLAs agreed with the Service Provider.
Service Providers will extend network slices to enterprises by offering different SLAs and performance requirements, so that IT managers can select applications and route them to network slices that match their service requirements. IT Managers are already used to SD-WAN logics, but now they will be able to do it even more efficiently by exploiting network slicing on standalone 5G networks.
If enterprises are to reap the full benefits of 5G connectivity and service providers are to maximize their 5G investments, 5G network slicing will need to be deployed on a large scale, well beyond the consumer world, and build the use cases required by enterprises.
Network solutions are at their best when they enable mobility, security and adaptability. While 5G offers all of these benefits, businesses have traditionally embraced cellular-based connections to connect where fiber is unavailable or unsuitable for the business model, or for failover solutions in the event fiber connections go down. With the adoption of 5G network slicing, companies will be able to “cut the wires”, which are still often synonymous with connectivity, and will be able to take advantage of the versatility of cellular networks, which significantly reduce deployment costs and maximize company resources .