If you install Draytek routers into small businesses, you will recognise this conversation. The customer is on a slow FTTC line, or waiting months for a new FTTP provision, or on a site where laying a new cable is not practical. They need a fast, reliable connection. They need it soon.
5G Fixed Wireless Access is the answer to most of those calls. Mount an outdoor CPE on the wall or a pole, run a single PoE cable inside, plug it into the Draytek WAN port, and you are done. No civils, no wayleave, no 90-day lead time. The Draytek handles routing, firewall, VPN, and VLAN exactly as it always has. The 5G CPE just gives it a fast WAN feed to work with.
Two outdoor 5G units come up regularly in these conversations: the Zyxel NR7101 and the Milesight UF51. This post looks at both from the perspective of a networking reseller who already has a Draytek install base and wants to add 5G FWA as a service.
The architecture: outdoor CPE into a Draytek WAN port
Both devices are outdoor CPEs. They mount externally, take power via PoE from an injector or switch inside the building, and present a single Ethernet port back into the premises. That port connects to a WAN interface on the Draytek Vigor – a 2962, 3910, or whichever model is on site.
The Draytek then does what it always does. The customer’s LAN, firewall rules, VPN tunnels, and content filtering stay exactly as configured. You are not re-engineering the network. You are swapping or adding a WAN source. That is a straightforward conversation to have with an existing customer.
Understanding how 5G FWA works as a WAN feed – signal acquisition, latency characteristics, throughput under load – is worth a read before your first deployment if you are coming from a fixed-line background. The short version: a well-sited outdoor CPE with a clear signal path will comfortably outperform the FTTC lines most small business sites are still on.
Zyxel NR7101
The NR7101 is Zyxel’s outdoor 5G CPE. IP68 rated, 802.3at PoE powered, Sub-6 GHz 5G in SA and NSA modes. Six built-in directional antennas, 4×4 MIMO, theoretical downlink around 2.34 Gbps. Single 1GbE Ethernet port. Dual SIM slots.
It covers the basics. There are a few things to factor in before recommending it at scale, though.
Remote management runs through Zyxel’s Nebula cloud platform. Nebula is a capable system, but it is not free. Managing NR7101 units across multiple customer sites requires a Nebula licence per device – a recurring cost that needs building into every proposal and renewed every year. For a reseller running a managed connectivity service across ten or twenty sites, that cost compounds quickly.
The NR7101 is also primarily a connectivity appliance. It acquires the signal and passes Ethernet out. There is no edge scripting, no serial interfaces, no I/O. For a straightforward FWA deployment that is acceptable. For customers with more complex site requirements it offers nothing beyond the WAN feed itself.
The WAN port runs at 1GbE. On today’s 5G networks that is rarely a real bottleneck, but it does mean the hardware ceiling is lower than the headline throughput figures suggest.
Milesight UF51
The UF51 is also an outdoor 5G CPE – IP67 rated, 802.3at PoE powered, Sub-6 GHz 5G SA and NSA. From there the two devices diverge considerably.
The UF51 runs on a quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 at 2 GHz with 1 GB LPDDR4x RAM. That is a serious processor for an outdoor unit. Throughput reaches 4.67 Gbps downlink via 5G dual carrier aggregation, and the WAN port runs at 2.5GbE – properly specced for where UK 5G networks are heading over the next few years. You are not installing hardware that hits a ceiling at 1 Gbps.
VPN support is built in – OpenVPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP. For Draytek resellers building site-to-site VPN deployments, you have the option to terminate a tunnel at the CPE itself rather than relying entirely on the head-end device. Useful in some configurations, a non-issue in others, but good to have.
RS485 serial and galvanically isolated DI/DO are included. If a customer site has a gate controller, alarm panel, generator monitor, or any other equipment with a serial or digital interface, the UF51 can connect to it. That opens service conversations that go well beyond the WAN feed.
Node-RED is built into the firmware. Local automation, event logging, conditional alerts on signal degradation – all of it runs on the device without an additional box on site.
Multi-constellation GPS (GNSS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS) with 2-metre accuracy is included. Useful for fleet or asset applications, and it populates site location data in the management platform automatically.
The WiFi variant – the UF51-504AE-W4 – adds dual-band WiFi 6 with 4×4 MIMO: 1200 Mbps on 2.4 GHz and 2400 Mbps on 5 GHz. If the Draytek is racked in a comms cabinet and the customer wants wireless coverage close to the point of entry, the W4 handles it without a separate access point. Worth specifying by default on most installs.
There are two existing posts on this site covering the UF51 in more depth – the UF51 CPE overview and a closer look at UF51 as a fixed wireless access platform – worth reading before your first deployment.
Management cost: the number that changes the maths
This is the most commercially significant difference for resellers building a managed service.
Milesight DeviceHub is included at no additional cost. Remote configuration, firmware updates, event-based alerting, fleet visibility across all your customer sites – all part of the product. No per-device licence, no annual renewal.
Zyxel Nebula requires a paid licence per device. Over a three-year managed service contract across a fleet of sites, the cumulative management cost difference between the two platforms can comfortably exceed the hardware price gap several times over. That affects both your margin and your proposal pricing.
For resellers building a repeatable 5G FWA service – which is where the ongoing revenue is – the Milesight model is straightforwardly better. You are not paying to manage your own customers.
Comparison
| Feature | Zyxel NR7101 | Milesight UF51 |
|---|---|---|
| 5G standard | SA/NSA Sub-6 GHz | SA/NSA Sub-6 GHz |
| Theoretical downlink | 2.34 Gbps | 4.67 Gbps (2CC CA) |
| WAN port | 1GbE | 2.5GbE |
| IP rating | IP68 | IP67 |
| PoE power | 802.3at | 802.3at |
| WiFi option | Built-in 2.4/5 GHz | WiFi 6 4×4 MIMO (W4 variant) |
| Remote management | Nebula – paid licence | DeviceHub – included free |
| VPN | Limited | OpenVPN, IPsec, L2TP, PPTP |
| Serial / I/O | None | RS485 + isolated DI/DO |
| Edge scripting | None | Node-RED built in |
| GPS | Modem GPS | Multi-GNSS, 2 m accuracy |
| Processor | Not published | Quad-core Cortex-A55 2 GHz |
Which SIM for UK 5G FWA?
Hardware chosen, the SIM matters. For UK 5G FWA deployments, EE is the default starting point.
EE topped the RootMetrics UK rankings across all categories in the most recent independent benchmarking – H2 2025 – with median mobile broadband download speeds more than double the next closest competitor. For a customer replacing or supplementing a fixed line with a 5G WAN feed, that consistency matters. You are not selling a best-effort mobile connection. You are selling a primary business WAN, and it needs to behave like one.
EE business data SIMs are available with unlimited data and 5G access, including 5G Standalone on their top-tier plans. Unlimited data removes the usage conversation entirely. The customer pays a fixed monthly cost. Nobody watches a data counter. For cloud-heavy small businesses running VoIP, Teams, and file sync all day, that matters.
5G coverage across EE’s network covers the majority of small business sites in UK towns, suburban areas, and increasingly in rural locations near main roads and infrastructure corridors. The outdoor CPE and its high-gain antennas pull in a usable signal in locations where an indoor device would struggle. Check the SIM selection guidance on this site for a broader look at carrier options by geography.
Installation in brief
The 5G FWA installation guide covers the full process, but for Draytek resellers the steps are familiar. Mount the CPE on a south-facing wall or pole with a clear signal path, run Cat 5e or Cat 6 back to a PoE injector inside, connect the injector output to a WAN interface on the Draytek, configure the WAN as DHCP or static depending on the SIM, done. The Draytek picks up the new WAN and routes normally.
If the Draytek is an older model with a single WAN port and you want 5G as a primary connection with the existing line as backup, Draytek’s load balancing and failover configuration handles it. Nothing about the CPE changes that process.
Adding 5G FWA to your Draytek install base
5G FWA is not a niche product any more. It is a practical answer to a common problem – slow provisioning, difficult sites, unreliable fixed lines, customers who cannot wait for infrastructure work. As a Draytek reseller you have the trusted relationship, the site access, and the network knowledge to deploy this well. The hardware is straightforward. The service model is repeatable.
The Milesight UF51 is the right unit for that model. Better throughput ceiling, free management platform, more capability for complex sites, and a growing install base in the UK. The Zyxel NR7101 is a capable device, but its ongoing licence cost and limited edge capability make it a harder recommendation for resellers building a managed service.
If you are looking at adding 5G FWA as a service line, see the CPE and router overview for a broader look at the hardware options, and the use cases page for the verticals where this lands most naturally.
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