At the Edge of a Seamless Cloud Experience

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges of edge computing and proposes using containers and WebAssembly to enable a seamless cloud experience on heterogeneous, mobile devices at the network edge.

Contribution

It introduces a framework leveraging containers and WebAssembly to address heterogeneity and mobility challenges in edge computing environments.

Findings

Containers and WebAssembly facilitate application management on diverse edge devices.

Proposed solutions improve latency and adaptability in edge computing scenarios.

Framework supports seamless integration with traditional cloud services.

Abstract

There is a growing need for low latency for many devices and users. The traditional cloud computing paradigm can not meet this requirement, legitimizing the need for a new paradigm. Edge computing proposes to move computing capacities to the edge of the network, closer to where data is produced and consumed. However, edge computing raises new challenges. At the edge, devices are more heterogeneous than in the data centre, where everything is optimized to achieve economies of scale. Edge devices can be mobile, like a car, which complicates architecture with dynamic topologies. IoT devices produce a considerable amount of data that can be processed at the Edge. In this paper, we discuss the main challenges to be met in edge computing and solutions to achieve a seamless cloud experience. We propose to use technologies like containers and WebAssembly to manage applications' execution on heterogeneous devices.