Fog Computing is the Future

The term fog computing (or fogging) was coined by Cisco in 2014, so it is new for the general public. Fog and cloud computing are interconnected. In nature, fog is closer to the earth than clouds; in the technological world, it is just the same, fog is closer to end-users, bringing cloud capabilities down to the ground.

The main difference between fog computing and cloud computing is that the cloud is a centralized system, while the fog is a distributed decentralized infrastructure.

Impact of Current Cloud Computing Technologies

Innovations in services applications are transforming the industry in profound ways, enabling information and computing tech to perform business services more efficiently. It also involves building autonomous infrastructures that require minimal human involvement.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of this technology is how all of these massive applications must work together. Cutting-edge developments in cloud, edge, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems, as well as intelligent computing, deep learning, big data, and blockchain, are already impressive enough. However, effectively managing how to integrate these massive and sophisticated technologies requires a knowledge base wider than any one department or company.

Both cloud computing and fog computing provide storage, applications, and data to end-users. However, fog computing has closer proximity to end-users and bigger geographical distribution. It also boasts reduced data transfer latency, fast access to faulty areas, and quick functional recovery and self-healing capabilities that bring resilience to the system.

Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. Cloud computing can be a heavyweight and dense form of computing power. 

Fog computing or fog networking, also known as fogging, is an architecture that uses edge devices to carry out a substantial amount of computation, storage, communication locally and routed over the internet backbone.

An edge device is a device that provides an entry point into enterprise or service provider core networks. Examples include routers, routing switches, integrated access devices (IADs), multiplexers, and a variety of metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) access devices. Edge devices also provide connections into carrier and service provider networks. An edge device that connects a local area network to a high-speed switch or backbone (such as an ATM switch) may be called an edge concentrator.

In general, edge devices are normally routers that provide authenticated access (most commonly PPPoA and PPPoE) to faster, more efficient backbone and core networks. The trend is to make the edge device smart and the core device(s) “dumb and fast”, so edge routers often include Quality of Service (QoS) and multi-service functions to manage different types of traffic. Consequently, core networks are often designed with switches that use routing protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for reliability and scalability, allowing edge routers to have redundant links to the core network. Links between core networks are different, for example, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routers often used for peering exchanges.

In conclusion, IoT gateways drivers will address Fog Computing in the following areas: