Open Networking & Edge Summit 2020

IoT has been spreading like wildfire: millions of small devices have been gathering an increasing amount of data to be computed to centralized data centers. Until now. That amount of data has become so massive to push networks to the limit.

Edge computing aims to solve this issue by processing the data close to where it is produced. This distributes data centers, moving them to the edge of the network and creating clusters of embedded devices. However, it also opens up to a number of novel issues: How do devices transmit data and commands? How do clusters interact with wider systems and users? To what extent can Docker containers be employed to speed up deployments?

In this talk, we will analyze those challenges w.r.t a real-world cluster of ARM computers. We'll look at the applicability of messaging protocols to send both data and commands within the cluster, how to implement the need of asynchronicity and how Docker containers can simplify deployments on top of a core embedded OS.