HomeCloud: An Edge Cloud Framework and Testbed for New Application Delivery

 This paper aims at solving a problem, cloud computing would face in the future, where there would be a lot of devices with computational intensive tasks. An edge cloud framework is presented and the architectural details are discussed. The framework integrates two complementary technologies; SDN and NFV, to enable an open and efficient application delivery in edge computing.

Summary:

The foresee the challenges that will be faced by the conventional centralized cloud computing solutions.

1.     Networking among a massive (much more than that exists today) number of devices would require transferring huge data volumes from the edge to remote data centers.

2.     The latency issues surrounding the transfer of this data, between edge devices and remote data centers.

3.     Applications today are usually not portable across platforms, obscuring innovation and leading to a monopoly.

The following points are discussed in the paper:

1.     The paper claims that an open edge cloud framework is necessary to break monopoly and handle the IoT paradigm shift.

2.     The most important challenge in this being enhancements in edge cloud orchestration and application delivery approaches.

3.     Integrate two emerging and complementary technologies –

a.     Network function virtualization(NFV)

b.     Software-defined networking(SDN)

4.The proposed framework – HomeCloud – is discussed with primary focus on orchestration and application delivery framework.

5.A particularly new and innovative technique to use NFV and SDN to enable this framework.

6.Two use cases to show the necessity for such a framework.

A proof-of-concept demonstrating the entire process of cloud orchestration and application delivery.

Strengths

1.     The paper provides a very neat and concise presentation of the proposed framework.

2.     The idea of having an open source framework will encourage the smaller ASPs and help in advancements in research in this area.

3.     The paper foresees a very realistic future of the increasing volume of data transfer and network latency issues, and provides a low-cost and flexible solution to add more devices to the network.

4.     HomeCloud utilizes SDN and NFV to implement orchestration and improve efficiency, and talks about how these complementary technologies can be utilized to benefit edge computing.

5.     A fair idea of the positives of the framework is demonstrated using the chat application, and the use cases discuss the implementation of the framework at a higher level along with the application portability.

Weakness

1.     The test results are not backed up by performance or cost details.

2.     There is no comparison done between the existing centralized cloud platform and the proposed framework.

3.     Securing the network is an area not addressed by the paper.

4.     The chat application, although being a good example to demonstrate that the framework works, does not help in answering questions of scalability and handling computationally intensive tasks.

Discussion

1.     The cost of replacing the existing infrastructure with this new framework and the time that it would take to implement this.

2.     Many other use cases need to be discussed.

3.     How far can this idea break the existing monopoly that the large corporations enjoy today, and  would these corporations even be interested in this?