Simulation of Hybrid Edge Computing Architectures

TL;DR

This paper explores a hybrid edge computing architecture that integrates P2P communication to improve data relay and traffic management in environments with limited or no internet connectivity, evaluated through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decentralized P2P-based scheme for edge computing that enhances data relay capabilities without relying solely on internet connectivity.

Findings

P2P relay improves data dissemination in disconnected environments

System configurations impact traffic efficiency and latency

Simulation results validate the proposed hybrid approach

Abstract

Dealing with a growing amount of data is a crucial challenge for the future of information and communication technologies. More and more devices are expected to transfer data through the Internet, therefore new solutions have to be designed in order to guarantee low latency and efficient traffic management. In this paper, we propose a solution that combines the edge computing paradigm with a decentralized communication approach based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P). According to the proposed scheme, participants to the system are employed to relay messages of other devices, so as to reach a destination (usually a server at the edge of the network) even in absence of an Internet connection. This approach can be useful in dynamic and crowded environments, allowing the system to outsource part of the traffic management from the Cloud servers to end-devices. To evaluate our proposal, we carry out some experiments with the help of LUNES, an open source discrete events simulator specifically designed for distributed environments. In our simulations, we tested several system configurations in order to understand the impact of the algorithms involved in the data dissemination and some possible network arrangements.