FOG COMPUTING

Fog computing is a term invented by Cisco. It is extension of cloud computing which provides cloud services to the edge of a network. Fog computing is also known as Edge Computing or fogging. Fog computing provides computing, storage and networking services between end devices and cloud computing data centers.

The areas of concerns in cloud computing architecture are high latency and QoS (Quality of Service). The goal of fogging is to improve efficiency and reduce latency time. It also reduces the amount of data to be transported to the cloud for processing, analysis and storage. It not only improves efficiency but it may also be used for security and compliance reasons.

The metaphor fog comes from the meteorological term for a cloud close to the ground, just as fog concentrates on the edge of the network.The OpenFog Consortium was founded in November 2015 by members from Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, ARM and Princeton University. Its mission is to develop an open reference architecture and convey the business value of fog computing.

Thedata is generated and collected by edge devices and sensorsin the network. They don't have the compute and storage resources to perform advanced analytics and machine-learning tasks. The servers at cloud with high storage capacity have the power to do computation, but they are often too far away to process the data and respond in a timely manner.  It increases latency time as well as degrades overall performance of the network.In addition to this, having sending raw data to the cloud over the internet can have privacy, security and legal implications.

In a fog environment, the processing takes place on a smart device, or in a smart router or gateway, thus reducing the amount of data sent to the cloud. It is important to note that fog networking complements not replaces cloud computing. Fogging allows for short-term analytics at the edge, and the cloud performs resource-intensive, longer-term analytics.

The major area of application of Fog computing is IoT. Because For many IoT applications where cloud computing is not feasible, fog computing can be used. Fog computing addresses the needs of IoT and industrial IoT. The smart sensors and IoT devices generateimmense amount of data. It would be costly and time-consuming to send this huge amount of data to the cloud for processing and analysis. Fog computing reduces the bandwidth requirement and reduces the back-and-forth communication between sensors and the cloud which can negatively affect IoT performance. Fog computing is very effective in the adhoc network environment with intermittent connectivity and low bandwidth medium.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Reduces amount of data sent to the cloud	Physical location takes anytime,anywhere, anydata benefit of the cloud
Conserves network bandwidth	Security issues: IP address spoofing
Improves system response time	Privacy issues
Supports mobility	Trust and authentication concerns
Minimizes network and Internet latency	Wireless network security concerns

Ms. Nisha Wadhawan 

Assistant Professor

Department of Management Studies