EuroWire July 2019

Transatlantic Cable

At least, writes Mr Dano, that’s the idea.

Telecommunications

DataBank’s Mr Martynek argues that there’s very little need for hundreds or thousands of mini computing locations spread out all over the country. Specifically, he noted that there are already several data centres physically located in most major metro markets in the USA. And Mr Martynek adds that a growing number of regional data centres can already handle most of today’s edge computing needs. For example, he says, DataBank currently operates a data centre in Minneapolis, roughly a thousand miles away from the nation’s three main data centre hubs in Ashburn, Virginia; Dallas; and Santa Clara, California. He wrote that one data centre in Minneapolis essentially eliminates the need to build additional micro data centres in that city. “The incremental improvement of going from one data centre location to five micro data centre locations only improves your round trip latency by less than 1-2ms.” As a result, he argues: “Deploying in tens-hundreds-thousands of micro data centres would only improve latency by 1ms or less, and in some cases [could] introduce latency, depending on where the peering occurs.” Similarly, Equinix’s Mr Poole notes that edge computing is already available in a basic form, considering that Equinix operates roughly 200 data centres around the world. And that raises the question of whether additional computing locations are really needed to support edge computing use cases like remote surgery or cloud gaming. Mr Gedeon acknowledged: “The classical mobile edge is a solution looking for a problem in some respects.” However, most speakers at Big 5G agreed that, eventually, 5G will help spark more demand for edge computing services. “Does 5G need edge computing? I’d say the answer is yes. Does edge computing need 5G? The answer is no,” was Mr Poole’s conclusion, while Mr Gedeon asserted: ”I think edge computing is one of the two or three things that make 5G different.” Mr Poole argued that wireless networks would need to be essentially redesigned to take full advantage of the edge computing opportunity. Instead of routing all traffic through a handful of on-ramps, mobile operators will need to create ways for applications to immediately access local mobile users and to interoperate. For example, an autonomous driving system in Denver must be able to immediately route its traffic to 5G users in the city, rather than through an operator’s central routing location in Dallas, and that system must also work regardless of whether the

Edge computing. A solution looking for a problem?

Mike Dano, editorial director for 5G and mobile strategies at Lightreading , reporting from the Big 5G event in Denver during May, took a round up of views of the future of edge computing [9 th May: “Data centre firms, mobile operators pour cold water on edge computing”] The topic of edge computing has generated a significant amount of hype, and many in the space do agree it could play a key role in the ultimate development of 5G technology, but some top players in the mobile networking and data centre industries are voicing serious concerns about edge computing in the near and even the medium term. “Spend enough time in the telecom and technology industries and it becomes clear that the hype of many new technologies usually precedes the reality by five to ten years. We believe that is the case with micro edge data centres,” wrote Raul Martynek, CEO of DataBank. Jim Poole, VP of ecosystem business development at data centre giant Equinix, said that mobile operators will need to completely revise their network designs away from voice services to get edge computing to work in a 5G world. “This whole thing needs to be changed, rearchitected,” he said. “5G is an extraordinarily daunting change.” Mr Poole likened the process to “turning around an aircraft carrier, in the mud.” Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO of Canadian mobile operator Telus, warns of a serious chance that the edge computing space could become mired in the telecom industry’s standards process. “It took us forever just to come up with ORAN,” he said, of the wireless industry’s work to separate vendors’ various network components from each other. Edge computing proponents argue that the mostly centralised nature of the Internet today won’t support the snappy, real-time services that 5G providers hope to offer, like autonomous vehicles and streaming virtual reality. Such services require almost immediate connections between computing services and users, and an edge computing design would enable that instant connection by physically locating data centres geographically close to the users that need them. Such a design – dispersed computing instead of consolidated in one location – could, potentially, eliminate the tens or even hundreds of milliseconds it takes for a user’s request to travel across a network to a computer that can answer it.

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Adrian Grosu

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July 2019