Edge Computing Platforms and Protocols

TL;DR: Edge computing is a new cloud paradigm which aims to bring existing cloud services and utilities near end users by utilizing compute resources in the vicinity of users and IoT sensors to reduce the network load on the cloud.

Abstract: Cloud computing has created a radical shift in expanding the reach of application usage and has emerged as a de-facto method to provide low-cost and highly scalable computing services to its users. Existing cloud infrastructure is a composition of large-scale networks of datacenters spread across the globe. These datacenters are carefully installed in isolated locations and are heavily managed by cloud providers to ensure reliable performance to its users. In recent years, novel applications, such as Internet-of-Things, augmented-reality, autonomous vehicles etc., have proliferated the Internet. Majority of such applications are known to be time-critical and enforce strict computational delay requirements for acceptable performance. Traditional cloud offloading techniques are inefficient for handling such applications due to the incorporation of additional network delay encountered while uploading pre-requisite data to distant datacenters. Furthermore, as computations involving such applications often rely on sensor data from multiple sources, simultaneous data upload to the cloud also results in significant congestion in the network. Edge computing is a new cloud paradigm which aims to bring existing cloud services and utilities near end users. Also termed edge clouds, the central objective behind this upcoming cloud platform is to reduce the network load on the cloud by utilizing compute resources in the vicinity of users and IoT sensors. Dense geographical deployment of edge clouds in an area not only allows for optimal operation of delay-sensitive applications but