Access and Feeds

Fog Computing: Computing Platform for the Internet of Everything

By Dick Weisinger

Fog Computing, sometimes called Edge Computing, is computing that is done on local connected devices.  It’s a concept that Cisco in particular has been promoting.  The idea is an alternative or complement to cloud computing.  Rather than moving data back and forth from the cloud, devices located on the “edge of the network”, like routers, switches and IP cameras can more efficiently process and manage the data.  As more and more smart devices are connected to the network, Fog Computing becomes a platform for an Internet of Things (IoT) architecture, pushing data, processing and applications out to the network edge.

Roberto de la Mora, Senior Director of the Internet of Things at Cisco, describes Fog Computing as “a paradigm that extends Cloud computing and services to the edge of the network. Similar to Cloud, Fog provides data, compute, storage, and application services to end-users. The distinguishing characteristics of Fog are its proximity to end-users, its dense geographical distribution, and its support for mobility. Services are hosted where they’re used: at the network edge or even end devices such as set-top-boxes or access points. By hosting services locally, the Fog paradigm reduces service latency and improves QoS, resulting in superior user-experience.”

Fog Computing is more of a complement to rather than a replacement of the cloud.  Devices on the Fog platform might be used for real-time capture, processing and filtering of data, and then ultimately push that data to the cloud so that it can be accessed globally.

Cisco research found that “while the Fog provides unique advantages for services across several verticals such as IT, entertainment, advertising, personal computing etc., Cisco is specially interested in investigating Fog advantages for Big Data services in several verticals including IoE. Specifically, innovations in compute, storage offerings for data intensive services.”

 

 

 

 

 

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