ive, and built for scale, resilience, and speed. This new microservice-based infrastructure ushers in the scope of automation in deployment, operations, and maintenance. This, in turn, results in speedy deployment of the network and ease of maintenance. Automation also comes in handy to onboard new use cases tailored to suit an enterprise's needs while at the same time driving down costs significantly. As the 3GPP has standardized the cloud-native approach of 5G SA networks, this has provided room for innovation and for open source communities to thrive, thus helping advance the unprecedented pace of network enhancements. The following illustration shows what a commercial 5G macro network would look like: VPLMN HPLMN 23.501, 23.502. 23.503: 5GC Stage 2 29.500, 29.501: SBA 33.126/127/128: Lawful Intercept Stage 1/2/3 29.571 Data Types 29.573 33.501: Security 29.531 29.504 32.290 Charging Flows 29.522 29.519 29.505 NWDAF 29.503 Subscript Structure Policy Converged Spending App Data Charging Limit 29.531 29.509 29.504 32.291 29.594 29.510 29.504 29.551 29.520 29.503 29.523 29.518 29.508 29.502 29.554 29.540 29.518 Events 29.518 Policy Policy 29.511 29.502 29.512 29.51 Policy Policy 29.521 29.507 29.525 24.501 29.524 24.526 UE Policies HAS Error HTTP Error 29.244 29.513 Policy Flows 38.413 29.413 NG-RAN 29.281 29.561 38.415 Control 38.300: NG-RAN Stage 2 29.281 Non-3GPP N3IWF 24.502 Figure 11.1 - Commercial 5G SA network components and their 3GPP references This model of deployment also opened up possibilities for mobile network operators to choose between a variety of options, ranging from an on-prem private cloud-based model to a public cloud or hybrid model that meets both options halfway. In this section, we have been introduced to the 5G SA network. In the upcoming sections, we will delve into details of the fundamentals of designing such a network. 5G SA network design fundamentals A standard 5G SA architecture uses only one radio technology called 5G NR, along with a 5G core. In addition to enhancements in the