What is Edge Computing? How it’s Changing the Network and IoT?

Edge Computing created an era where you can watch a video within a second of clicking the play button. Tech giants like Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft all depends on Edge Computing for a faster to the milliseconds of speed to deliver their content, services and media to people all around the world.

What is edge computing?

Edge Computing Defined by Gartner – “Edge computing is a part of a distributed computing topology in which information processing systems located close to the internet of things where people produce or consume that information such as mobiles, computers even toasters, and cars.

Why does edge computing matter?

In edge computing, data is processed as close to the host as possible, instead of the conventional data hosting server. Major players in the edge computing markets are Amazon, Google, Microsoft and a boomer Cloudflare.

Let’s take an example to explain with an example – ” If you have a house with smart sensors, and the data is being transferred to the cloud, any latency in the cloud would result in upset customers as actions would not get executed in time.

As the faster network technology like 5G wireless network is getting deployed, its making the edge computing systems to accelerate the creation or support for Real time Applications such as live streaming,automated cars, artificial intelligence , etc.

Also, one of the most popular streaming site Netflix is running on the same model, making it more accessible over the globe with least latency hence user reliably watch their favourite Series and Movies

What is Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

A CDN or a Content Delivery Network is a network which is distributed all over the globe as proxy servers and data centers to provide high availability and performance to the service.

Content Delivery Services include – Streaming Services like Disney plus and Netflix, software downloads, web and mobile content acceleration, load balancing, DDOS protection etc.

During the time of the COVID when most of the population is sitting home and completely dependant on the internet for passing their day, be it Video Streaming, Music Streaming, Content Browsing, work from home or even checking out content on Wegrouptalk.

Edge Computing and Content Delivery Networks helped to cut latency, server load and increasing security and making fewer downtimes possible.

How secure is Edge Computing?

“Edge computing adds new vectors with potential for break-in,” said Beth Cohen, co-founder of the edge computing working group at OpenStack and advanced networking product manager at Verizon. “Data centers are already fairly secure and physical access is pretty limited.”

Network deployments edge can be in exposed locations, such as cell towers and the locations which are remote and are not actively monitored and secured as traditional hosting.

Rob Hirschfeld, founder and CEO of RackN, said that with edge computing, the importance of data encryption is magnified. Due to the fact that edge computing deployments might not have the same physical security as traditional cloud deployments, an attacker could steal a hard drive or potentially plug in a USB key. Hirschfeld also suggested that trusted platform computing elements all need to be turned on for edge computing.

“There is security embedded in infrastructure now that we’re not using now, in part because it’s not well automated,” Hirschfeld said.

Edge Computing Architecture

With the rise of energy-efficient, powerful mobile processors, cheap solid-state storage, and the widespread availability of wireless connectivity, edge computing has the potential to hyper-distribute enterprise infrastructure.

Why are companies moving to edge computing?

The most important reason to adopt edge computing is speed.Edge computing makes the reliable transfer of data different part of world without any interruptions even on thousands of miles of distance. Internet speeds might be increasing all the time, but so are computing demands. Many cloud software providers are working hard to reduce bandwidth consumption and problems with high latency.

Having to be online all the time is another source of frustration, particularly when it comes to computing on the move where connections might be intermittent. Fortunately, things are changing. For example, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) often provide a basic level of offline functionality. Google’s Chrome OS, one of the most cloud-centric platforms of all time, now let’s Chromebook users work offline.

Do you need the cloud for everything?

The definitions of edge computing and the internet of things(IoT) most of the time are used for one or another, but both of them are not the same things. An edge computing device doesn’t need to be connected to the internet connection at all times, or even at all. Instead, it might be connected only to a local network, which could be used in industrial or other small/local businesses.

Most of these devices are meant to retain some or even all of the features offline. It means companies can lower risks by disabling direct connections between edge computing devices and cloud computing unless they’re necessary for performing critical functions. Hence, the data should be protected behind multiple layers of security, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication.

Internet of Things (IoT) and Edge Computing

In IoT, with the help of edge computing, intelligence moves to the edge. For example, if you have massive amounts of data and for this, you have to leverage in such end to endways or highly sensor intensive or data-intensive environments where data is made at the edge, which is due to IoT as data sensing at the edge.

And also, with real-time information, the increasing unstructured data of which sensor and IoT data are part, traditional approaches don’t meet the requirements which are needed. There are various scenarios where speed and high-speed data are the main components for management, power issues, analytics, and real-time need, etc. helps to process data with edge computing in IoT.

Internet of Things (IoT) Critical Cases for Edge Computing

• Network bandwidth limitations and cut costs.
• Evolution of Cloud Computing.
• Data Center Loads and Complementing.
• Security Concerns.

Benefits of Enabling Edge Computing for the Internet of Things (IoT)

• Lesser Network Load
• Zero Latency
• Reduced Data Exposure
• Computational Efficient
• Costs and Autonomous Operation
• Security and Privacy

Future Directions of Computing for the Internet of Things (IoT)

• Edge-to-Cloud data exchange capabilities
• Common-on-Edge data exchange capabilities
• Streaming Data Analytics and Batch frameworks and APIs
• Controlled rolling and Versioning upgrades of applications
• Status of application monitoring from an Ad-Hoc Cloud Dashboard
• Cloud-Based Deployments of Edge Computing Applications

I hope this article gave you enough information about what is edge computing and how it’s changing the IoT. Also, I want to share with you that Wegrouptalk supports the world food programme. To know more About Wegrouptalk, please Visit ours About us Page.

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