Private 5G (also non-public 5G, dedicated 5G, or campus/industrial 5G) denotes 3GPP-conformant 5G systems operated for a defined organisation or site — factory, port, mine, hospital, stadium, or utility — rather than as a nationwide public mobile service. 3GPP Release 16+ formalised Non-Public Networks (NPN) with two principal models: Standalone NPN (SNPN) — an isolated PLMN (dedicated MCC/MNC or PLMN ID) with its own 5GC and NG-RAN; and Public Network Integrated NPN (PNI-NPN) — a slice or dedicated DNN on a public operator’s 5G with contractual isolation. Private 5G delivers URLLC-capable connectivity, local breakout (traffic stays on-site via local UPF), deterministic QoS, and control over upgrades and security policies — advantages over Wi-Fi 6/7 in mobility, scheduling, and industrial TSN integration scenarios, at higher cost and regulatory complexity.
Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft’s enterprise directory and identity platform, first released with Windows 2000 and now the dominant identity provider in enterprise environments worldwide. It combines four technologies into a single integrated system: LDAP as the directory access protocol for querying and modifying identity data; Kerberos 5 as the authentication protocol for issuing tickets that prove identity without transmitting passwords; DNS as the service location mechanism that clients use to discover domain controllers, Kerberos KDCs, and LDAP servers; and Group Policy as the configuration management system that pushes security settings, software installation, and policy enforcement to every joined machine. These four components are inseparable in practice: a Linux host joining an AD domain receives a Kerberos principal in AD’s KDC, a machine account object in the AD LDAP directory, a DNS record for its hostname, and (optionally) Group Policy Objects applied to it. The AD forest is the trust boundary: multiple domains can exist within a forest and all share a common schema, configuration, and Global Catalog, with transitive Kerberos trust between them.
