4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a cellular standard that has become widespread around the world. It is capable of providing typical real-world speeds upward of >100 Mbps, although observed performance can and will vary based on multiple factors, including but not limited to signal strength and quality, radio congestion, and data rate limits imposed by the cellular carrier.
5G is the most recent standard to see widespread deployment, and is designed to offer significantly increased throughput and lower latency as compared to 4G LTE, with potential throughput upward of 2 Gbps with the use of carrier aggregation. With this development in cellular technology, the use of a cellular uplink as a dedicated uplink has become more feasible than ever before.
5G connectivity comes in two types, 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) and 5G Standalone (SA), which are briefly explained further in the next section. At the time of writing, 5G deployment is still in relatively early stages, primarily available near large population centers where the smaller cell size and increased throughput offered by 5G is most impactful.
All Meraki MG devices currently support 4G LTE as the base standard for connectivity, with select models offering 5G connectivity.
5G NSA Versus 5G SA
There are currently two versions of 5G connectivity being deployed, 5G NSA and 5G SA. While both of these adhere to the new 5G standards, 5G SA is more capable of providing higher bandwidth and lower latency than 5G NSA, at the cost of significantly increased deployment and infrastructure costs for cellular providers.
Because of this increase in cost and complexity for deploying 5G SA, the 5G NSA standard was created. This intermediate standard is designed to provide 5G functionality while piggybacking the existing 4G LTE carrier networks. 5G NSA allows for the proliferation of 5G devices on carrier networks and an increase in performance compared to 4G LTE while reducing the initial deployment and upgrade costs associated with implementing a full 5G SA network.
Due to the current lack of availability of public 5G SA networks, MG devices that support 5G, such as the MG51, operate using either 4G LTE or 5G NSA, depending on availability and carrier configuration. Once 5G SA networks become more widely available, expect Cisco Meraki to release MG devices capable of utilizing full 5G SA connectivity.