The IoT device ecosystem is being blessed with a dazzling array of slim and sleek, trendy and handy, purpose-specific and generic, disappearing, disposable yet indispensable, resource-constrained and intensive, and embedded yet networked devices. Therefore, our personal, as well as professional, environments are increasingly being stuffed with such kinds of functionally powerful devices that are instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. This trend and transition set a stimulating foundation for a variety of connected and smarter environments. By empowering our everyday devices to be computing, communicative, sensitive, and responsive, the newly introduced concept of edge or fog computing is to bring forth a number of innovations, disruptions, and transformations for the IT domain. This chapter conveys how the various protocols contribute immensely to the intended success of fog computing and analytics in the days ahead.
TopIntroduction To Iot Edge/Fog Computing
Edge computing refers to the processing of data nearby the IoT devices which reduces the transmission of data to be sent through long routes. Computing of data is done closer to the network which helps in the organization of data for various industries. Here, the IoT devices are used to collect massive bulks of data to send it to the cloud data center for processing. Some of the data are processed locally in order to reduce the traffic in a central repository. This can be done by transmitting all the data from IoT devices to local devices and performing the common compute storage and networking process. The edge of the network processes the data and some of the data is sent to the central repository. An example of edge computing is the 5G cellular networks. It is done by adding micro data centers to the 5G towers.
Fog refers to the interconnection between the cloud and edge devices. Edge refers to space where the processing or computing is done being closer to the edge devices.
Some of the important terms and definitions for edge computing given by (Butler, 2017):
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Edge Devices: These are devices that produce data. It can be sensors or any other machine which capture or produce data.
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Edge: The edge differs in every case. In telecommunications, the cell tower is the edge.
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Edge Gateway: It is the buffer between the fog network and where the processing is done. It acts like a window above the edge of the network.
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Edge Computing Equipment: It uses a range of devices and machines, after enabling the Internet accessibility in them. An example for this is Amazon Web Service’s Snowball.
Most of the data management is done in the cloud data center. In an edge computing model, the devices transmit the data to the closest edge computing equipment, which acts as a gateway helps in the processing of data rather than sending it back to the cloud or the data centre. Therefore, edge computing helps in the processing of data on the nearest edge rather than taking the data to the cloud, which increased the transmission cost and signal strength. By 2020, most of the enterprises will make use of edge computing. It is better suited for capturing and processing using IoT devices than doing it in the cloud. All the manufacturing industries, factories, organizations can adopt this technology easily into their environment. The deployment is a difficult task but the standards could do it easily. Hence the dependency over the cloud is minimized and the management of data becomes simple.
The definition given by NIST is
Fog computing is a horizontal, physical or virtual resource paradigm that resides between smart end-devices and traditional cloud or data centers. This paradigm supports vertically-isolated, latency-sensitive applications by providing ubiquitous, scalable, layered, federated, and distributed computing, storage, and network connectivity.
Edge computing helps in improving the scalability, energy efficiency and provision of contextual information processing of cloud (Pan, Beyah, Goscinski, & Ren, 2017). It emphasizes the usage of different types of edge devices, such as smart phones, routers, etc.