Upgrading Wireless Home Routers for Enabling Large-Scale Deployment of Cloudlets

Abstract

Abstract. Smartphones become more and more popular over recent years due to their small form factors. However, such mobile systems are resource-constrained in view of computational power, storage and battery life. Offloading resource-intensive tasks (aka mobile cloud computing) to distant (e.g., cloud computing) or closely located data centers (e.g., cloudlet) overcomes these issues. Especially, cloudlets provide computational power with low latency for responsive applications due to their proximity to mobile users. However, a large-scale deployment of rangerestricted cloudlets is still an open challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel concept for a large-scale deployment of cloudlets by upgrading wireless home routers. Beside router's native purpose of routing data packets through the network, it can now offer computing resources with low latency and high bandwidth without additional hardware. Proving our concept, we conducted comprehensive benchmark tests against existing concepts. As result, the feasibility of this concept is shown and provide a promising way to large-scale deploy cloudlets in existing infrastructures.

Challenges and Opportunities in Edge Computing

“…There is research in upgrading the resources of edge nodes to support general purpose computing. For example, a wireless home router can be upgraded to support additional workloads [23]. Intel's Smart Cell Platform 17 uses virtualisation for supporting additional workloads.…”

“…Edge computing can be realised in practice and be made accessible publicly if responsibilities, relationships and risks of all parties involved are articulated. There are numerous efforts to define a variety of cloud standards, such as by National Institutes of Standards and Technology(NIST) 2021 23 , Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) 24 and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 25 . However, such standards will now need to be reconsidered in light of additional stakeholders, such as public and private organisations that own edge nodes, to define the social, legal and ethical aspects of using edge nodes.…”

“…Edge computing can be realised in practice and be made accessible publicly if responsibilities, relationships and risks of all parties involved are articulated. There are numerous efforts to define a variety of cloud standards, such as by National Institutes of Standards and Technology(NIST) 2021 , IEEE Standards Association 22 , International Standards Organisation 18 https://portal.etsi.org/portals/0/tbpages/mec/docs/mobileedge computing -introductory technical white paper v1%2018-09-14.pdf 19 http://www.cloud-council.org/deliverables/CSCC-Practical-Guide-to-Cloud-Service-Agreements.pdf 20 http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/ 21 http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-145.pdf 22 http://cloudcomputing.ieee.org/standards (ISO) 23 , Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) 24 and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 25 . However, such standards will now need to be reconsidered in light of additional stakeholders, such as public and private organisations that own edge nodes, to define the social, legal and ethical aspects of using edge nodes.…”

What the Fog? Edge Computing Revisited: Promises, Applications and Future Challenges

“…This can range from consumer-grade hardware to hardware designed for data centers. For example, small-scale single-board computers such as Raspberry Pis have been used in edge computing [88], [89] as well as home routers [90] or compact setups with more powerful hardware FIGURE 2. Edge computing device ecosystem.…”

Firmware Enhancements for BYOD-Aware Network Security

“…Such intra-domain communications are indeed rarely moderated and, in most cases, the responsibility is left to individual users to install and properly maintain the necessary security tools. Unfortunately, given the complexity of the current network threats, only a small portion of the connected users are in a position to properly install and maintain such tools on the large diversity of communication devices they use [8]. To address this situation we propose the use of inexpensive, privately owned Mobile Network Appliances (MNAs) that establish a security perimeter for each individual network user in a unified way.…”