Edge computing

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Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm which brings computation and
data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times
and save bandwidth.[1] The origins of edge computing lie in content delivery
networks that were created in the late 1990s to serve web and video content from
edge servers that were deployed close to users.[2] In the early 2000s, these
networks evolved to host applications and application components at the edge
servers,[3] resulting in the first commercial edge computing services[4] that
hosted applications such as dealer locators, shopping carts, real-time data
aggregators, and ad insertion engines.[3] Modern edge computing significantly
extends this approach through virtualization technology that make it easier to
deploy and run a wider range of applications on the edge servers.

The edge computing infrastructure

Contents
1 Definition
2 Concept
2.1 Privacy and security
2.2 Scalability
2.3 Reliability
3 Applications
4 See also
5 References
Definition
One definition of edge computing is any type of computer program that delivers low
latency nearer to the requests. Karim Arabi, in an IEEE DAC 2014 Keynote [5] and
subsequently in an invited talk at MIT's MTL Seminar in 2015 [6] defined edge
computing broadly as all computing outside the cloud happening at the edge of the
network, and more specifically in applications where real-time processing of data
is required. In his definition, cloud computing operates on big data while edge
computing operates on "instant data" that is real-time data generated by sensors or
users.

According to The State of the Edge report, edge computing concentrates on servers
"in close proximity to the last mile network."[citation needed] Alex Reznik, Chair
of the ETSI MEC ISG standards committee loosely defines the term: "anything that's
not a traditional data center could be the 'edge' to somebody."[7]

Edge nodes used for game streaming are known as gamelets,[8] which are usually one
or two hops away from the client.[9] Per Anand and Edwin 'the edge node is mostly
one or two hops away from the mobile client to meet the response time constraints
for real-time games' in the cloud gaming context.[9]

Concept
The increase of IoT devices at the edge of the network is producing a massive
amount of data to be computed at data centers, pushing network bandwidth
requirements to the limit[10]. Despite the improvements of network technology, data
centers cannot guarantee acceptable transfer rates and response times, which could
be a critical requirement for many applications.[11] Furthermore, devices at the
edge constantly consume data coming from the cloud, forcing companies to build
content delivery networks to decentralize data and service provisioning, leveraging
physical proximity to the end user. In a similar way, the aim of Edge Computing is
to move the computation away from data centers towards the edge of the network,
exploiting smart objects, mobile phones or network gateways to perform tasks and
provide services on behalf of the cloud. By moving services to the edge, it is
possible to provide content caching, service delivery, storage and IoT management
resulting in better response times and transfer rates. At the same time,
distributing the logic in different network nodes introduces new issues and
challenges.

Privacy and security

The distributed nature of this paradigm introduces a shift in security schemes used
in cloud computing. Not only data should be encrypted, but different encryption
mechanism should be adopted, since data may transit between different distributed
nodes connected through the internet before eventually reaching the cloud. Edge
nodes may also be resource constrained devices, limiting the choice in terms of
security methods. Moreover, a shift from centralized top-down infrastructure to a
decentralized trust model is required.[12] On the other hand, by keeping data at
the edge it is possible to shift ownership of collected data from service providers
to end-users.

Scalability
Scalability in a distributed network must face different issues. First, it must
take into account the heterogeneity of the devices, having different performance
and energy constraints, the highly dynamic condition and the reliability of the
connections, compared to more robust infrastructure of cloud data centers.
Moreover, security requirements may introduce further latency in the communication
between nodes, which may slow down the scaling process.[11]

Reliability
Management of failovers is crucial in order to maintain a service alive. If a
single node goes down and is unreachable, users should still be able to access a
service without interruptions. Moreover, edge computing systems must provide
actions to recover from a failure and alerting the user about the incident. To this
aim, each device must maintain the network topology of the entire distributed
system, so that detection of errors and recovery become easily applicable. Other
factors that may influence this aspect are the connection technology in use, which
may provide different levels of reliability, and the accuracy of the data produced
at the edge that could be unreliable due to particular environment conditions.[11]

Applications
Edge application services reduce the volumes of data that must be moved, the
consequent traffic, and the distance that data must travel. That provides lower
latency and reduces transmission costs. Computation offloading for real-time
applications, such as facial recognition algorithms, showed considerable
improvements in response times as demonstrated in early research.[13] Further
research showed that using resource-rich machines called cloudlets near mobile
users, offering services typically found in the cloud, provided improvements in
execution time when some of the tasks are offloaded to the edge node.[14] On the
other hand, offloading every task may result in a slowdown due to transfer times
between device and nodes, so depending on the workload an optimal configuration can
be defined.

Another use of the architecture is cloud gaming, where some aspects of a game could
run in the cloud, while the rendered video is transferred to lightweight clients
such as mobile, VR glasses, etc. Such type of streaming is also known as pixel
streaming.[8]

Other notable applications include connected, autonomous cars,[15] smart cities,

[16] , Industry 4.0 (smart industry) and home automation systems.[17]

See also
Cloudlet
Content delivery network
Edge device
Fat client
Fog computing
Heterogeneous computing
Mobile edge computing
Serverless architecture
Ubiquitous computing
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)
Industry 4.0
Personal computer
References
Hamilton, Eric. "What is Edge Computing: The Network Edge Explained".
cloudwards.net. Retrieved 2019-05-14.
"Globally Distributed Content Delivery, by J. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H.
Prokop, R. Sitaraman and B. Weihl, IEEE Internet Computing, Volume 6, Issue 5,
November 2002" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-08-09. Retrieved
2019-10-25.
Nygren., E.; Sitaraman R. K.; Sun, J. (2010). "The Akamai Network: A Platform for
High-Performance Internet Applications" (PDF). ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review.
44 (3): 2–19. doi:10.1145/1842733.1842736. Archived (PDF) from the original on
September 13, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2012. See Section 6.2: Distributing
Applications to the Edge
Davis, A.; Parikh, J.; Weihl, W. (2004). "EdgeComputing: Extending Enterprise
Applications to the Edge of the Internet". 13th International World Wide Web
Conference. doi:10.1145/1013367.1013397.
IEEE DAC 2014 Keynote: Mobile Computing Opportunities, Challenges and Technology
Drivers
MIT MTL Seminar: Trends, Opportunities and Challenges Driving Architecture and
Design of Next Generation Mobile Computing and IoT Devices
"ETSI - ETSI Blog - What is Edge?". etsi.org. Retrieved 2019-02-19.
"CloudHide: Towards Latency Hiding Techniques for Thin-client Cloud Gaming".
ResearchGate. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
Anand, B.; Edwin, A. J. Hao (January 2014). "Gamelets — Multiplayer mobile games
with distributed micro-clouds". 2014 Seventh International Conference on Mobile
Computing and Ubiquitous Networking (ICMU): 14–20. doi:10.1109/ICMU.2014.6799051.
ISBN 978-1-4799-2231-4.
Ivkovic, Jovan (2016-07-11). "[Serbian] The Methods and Procedures for
Accelerating Operations and Queries in Large Database Systems and Data Warehouse
(Big Data Systems)".
Shi, Weisong; Cao, Jie; Zhang, Quan; Li, Youhuizi; Xu, Lanyu (October 2016). "Edge
Computing: Vision and Challenges". IEEE Internet of Things Journal. 3 (5): 637–646.
doi:10.1109/JIOT.2016.2579198.
Garcia Lopez, Pedro; Montresor, Alberto; Epema, Dick; Datta, Anwitaman; Higashino,
Teruo; Iamnitchi, Adriana; Barcellos, Marinho; Felber, Pascal; Riviere, Etienne (30
September 2015). "Edge-centric Computing". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication
Review. 45 (5): 37–42. doi:10.1145/2831347.2831354.
Yi, S.; Hao, Z.; Qin, Z.; Li, Q. (November 2015). "Fog Computing: Platform and
Applications". 2015 Third IEEE Workshop on Hot Topics in Web Systems and
Technologies (HotWeb): 73–78. doi:10.1109/HotWeb.2015.22. ISBN 978-1-4673-9688-2.
Verbelen, Tim; Simoens, Pieter; De Turck, Filip; Dhoedt, Bart (2012). "Cloudlets:
Bringing the Cloud to the Mobile User". Proceedings of the Third ACM Workshop on
Mobile Cloud Computing and Services. ACM: 29–36. doi:10.1145/2307849.2307858.
Retrieved 4 July 2019.
It's Time to Think Beyond Cloud Computing Published by wired.com retrieved April
10, 2019,
Taleb, Tarik; Dutta, Sunny; Ksentini, Adlen; Iqbal, Muddesar; Flinck, Hannu (March
2017). "Mobile Edge Computing Potential in Making Cities Smarter". IEEE
Communications Magazine. 55 (3): 38–43. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600249CM. Retrieved
5 July 2019.
 Chakraborty, T.; Datta, S. K. (November 2017). "Home automation using edge
computing and Internet of Things". 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Consumer
Electronics (ISCE): 47–49. doi:10.1109/ISCE.2017.8355544. ISBN 978-1-5386-2189-9.
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