This week private 5G vendor, Celona Networks, announced routing capabilities for its cellular LAN solution. As the ecosystem for CBRS-supported devices grows, many enterprises are connecting client devices to private cellular networks using mobile gateways from the likes of Cradlepoint, Sierra Wireless or Inseego that convert CBRS signals to Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
But by doing this, end devices effectively become invisible and inaccessible to IT staff as each device sits on a separate subnet behind the mobile router. This creates administrative, security and performance challenges.
LAN products, such as a switch or Wi-Fi access point operate at layer 2 and do not have routing capabilities. But Celona has added industry standard routing protocols OSPF and RIPv2 to its product. Given Celona is a LAN product and has been aggressive with the marketing around the concept of a 5G LAN, which is like a Wi-Fi LAN, it begs the question, why is it adding layer 3 protocols?
As a former network engineer, I’m well versed in network configurations and protocols, but initially found this a bit confusing. Yet the more I thought about the capabilities, the more this made sense to me to increase device visibility across the end-to-end network.
While Celona’s 5G LAN is like conventional wireless LANs in its set-up, deployment and on-going management, there is one major difference. That difference is what is being connected. Because many IoT devices, such as robots, sensors and other IoT devices don’t yet support native-cellular connectivity, they need to attach to the private wireless network using a device that can translate signals from Wi-Fi or Ethernet to CBRS. These devices are effectively Layer 3 routers. Consequently, to gain direct access to these devices requires some sort of routing.
When these devices are connected to the 5G LAN using a mobile router gateway, they are typically deployed as separate subnets (network segments). This means a device on one subnet has no visibility and is effectively inaccessible to IT staff. In fact, many businesses will slice up a single physical network into multiple segments (VLANs) for traffic isolation, performance, or security purposes. Sending traffic cross segment requires backhauling traffic through a router, which is commonly done but does add to the cost and complexity of the network and can degrade performance. In some cases, this is fine, but when connecting robots and autonomous vehicles, the extra latency could be detrimental.
Celona could have gone down the path of building a router but instead chose a much simpler solution by adding intelligent routing to its core network stack. This is something that hasn’t been done by other private wireless vendors. As traffic passes through the Celona 4G LAN core, DHCP packets are examined to capture out the IP address and subnet being used. These host IP addresses are then added to a routing table to make client devices directly accessible without manual route configuration or arduous DHCP scoping.
As businesses build out bigger operational technology (OT) networks and start to rely on private cellular, this can greatly improve operations and visibility. The new protocols allow the Celona’s 4G LAN to act as a lightweight router that can connect OT and IT networks or internal segments together providing end to end visibility across the various IP domains.
This is similar to what the Wi-Fi vendors did when they added gateway capabilities to help pass Apple Bonjour and Google Chromecast protocols but on a smaller scale. When customers first started deploying devices, like Apple TV, into office buildings, problems occurred as neither Bonjour nor Chromecast are routable protocols so a user on one segment could no longer see their device on another. This could happen if a user installed one in their office and went to a different department and wanted to stream content from it. In this case, the Wi-FI vendors added basic gateway capabilities, akin to a bridge in that it kept the traffic at layer 2.
Celona’s use of RIP and OSPF is a more elegant solution and scales to bigger networks. With the Apple and Google devices, the Wi-Fi bridge was fine as business likely only had a few. With private cellular, in certain verticals, the 4G/5G connected devices could outnumber the Wi-Fi ones so scale had to be a consideration.
Also, because IT and OT networks are often run by different groups, they may use the same private IP addressing schemes, which can cause addressing headaches. An interesting feature in the Celona solution is its DHCP lease tracking and IP route management where multiple cellular routers can be used with the same addressing scheme, but IP address conflicts are avoided. This allows a Celona 5G LAN to use a single IP subnet for all devices behind multiple mobile routers.
In a pre-brief, I talked to Celona about the positioning of this product, and it’s important to note that Celona has no intention to be a full router per se to compete with the likes of Juniper and Cisco but wanted to integrate routing functionality within their core software stack to simplify operation. Competitive offerings from Nokia today provide separate routers to be used to integrate with existing enterprise IP domain structures.
The interest in private cellular has grown from just a handful of verticals to most businesses across verticals. As the deployments move from pilots to production, network engineers need to think about bringing the IT and OT networks together and the addition of routing protocols to the Celona product is an elegant solution to something that would likely have been a complicated solution for many companies.
Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. He provides a mix of tactical advice to help his clients in the current business climate and long-term strategic advice. Kerravala provides research and advice to end-user IT and network managers, vendors of IT hardware, software and services and the financial community looking to invest in the companies that he covers. He can be reached at [email protected], and follow him @zkerravala and on YouTube.
Industry Voices are opinion columns written by outside contributors—often industry experts or analysts—who are invited to the conversation by Fierce staff. They do not represent the opinions of Fierce.