{"id":1527,"date":"2022-02-22T09:41:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T09:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2022-02-22T09:41:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T09:41:39","slug":"introduction-to-edge-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/2022\/02\/22\/introduction-to-edge-computing\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Edge Computing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edge computing\u00c2\u00a0is a\u00c2\u00a0distributed computing\u00c2\u00a0paradigm which brings\u00c2\u00a0computation\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0data storage\u00c2\u00a0closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth.\u00c2\u00a0The origins of edge computing lie in\u00c2\u00a0content delivery networks\u00c2\u00a0that were created in the late 1990s to serve web and video content from edge servers that were deployed close to users.\u00c2\u00a0In the early 2000s, these networks evolved to host applications and application components at the edge servers,\u00c2\u00a0resulting in the first commercial edge computing services\u00c2\u00a0that hosted applications such as dealer locators, shopping carts, real-time data aggregators, and ad insertion engines.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0Modern edge computing significantly extends this approach through\u00c2\u00a0 virtualization\u00c2\u00a0 technology that make it easier to deploy and run a wider range of applications on the edge servers.<\/p>\n

The increase of\u00c2\u00a0IoT\u00c2\u00a0devices at the edge of the network is producing a massive amount of data to be computed to\u00c2\u00a0data centers, pushing network bandwidth requirements to the limit. Despite the improvements of\u00c2\u00a0network\u00c2\u00a0technology, data centers cannot guarantee acceptable transfer rates and response times, which could be a critical requirement for many applications.\u00c2\u00a0Furthermore, devices at the edge constantly consume data coming from the cloud, forcing companies to build\u00c2\u00a0content delivery networks\u00c2\u00a0to 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\u00c2\u00a0smart objects,\u00c2\u00a0mobile phones\u00c2\u00a0or\u00c2\u00a0network gateways\u00c2\u00a0to perform tasks and provide services on behalf of the cloud. By moving\u00c2\u00a0services\u00c2\u00a0to the edge, it is possible to provide content\u00c2\u00a0caching, service delivery,\u00c2\u00a0storage\u00c2\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n

Privacy and security:<\/span><\/p>\n

The distributed nature of this paradigm introduces a shift in security schemes used in\u00c2\u00a0cloud 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\u00c2\u00a0internet\u00c2\u00a0before 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.\u00c2\u00a0On the other hand, by keeping data at the edge it is possible to shift ownership of collected data from service providers to end-users.<\/p>\n

Scalability:<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Reliability:<\/span><\/p>\n

Management of\u00c2\u00a0failovers\u00c2\u00a0is 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\u00c2\u00a0network topology\u00c2\u00a0of 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0Computation offloading\u00c2\u00a0for real-time applications, such as facial recognition algorithms, showed considerable improvements in response times as demonstrated in early research.\u00c2\u00a0Further research showed that using resource-rich machines called\u00c2\u00a0cloudlets\u00c2\u00a0near 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.\u00c2\u00a0On 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0pixel streaming.\u00c2\u00a0Conventional cloud games may suffer from high latency and insufficient bandwidth, since the amount of data transferred is huge due to the high resolutions required by some services.<\/p>\n

Other notable applications include\u00c2\u00a0connected,\u00c2\u00a0autonomous\u00c2\u00a0cars,\u00c2\u00a0smart cities,\u00c2\u00a0Industry 4.0\u00c2\u00a0(smart industry) and\u00c2\u00a0home automation\u00c2\u00a0systems.<\/p>\n

The above is a brief about Edge Computing. Watch this space for more updates on the latest trends in Technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edge computing\u00c2\u00a0is a\u00c2\u00a0distributed computing\u00c2\u00a0paradigm which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[521,354,7],"tags":[522,355,18],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computing-paradigm","category-edge-computing","category-techtrends","tag-computing-paradigm","tag-edge-computing","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}