Report on Fog Computing

Fundamentals of Network computing

Prepared By:
• Osama Ahmed Mustafa 201924090111
• LEKA HABTE LEJEBO 201914090117
• KADHIM MUSTAFA RAAD KADHIM 201814090018

Submitted to:
• Prof. Chen Bo
 Contents
1. ........................................................................................................... INTRODUCTION
............................................................................................................................................ 3

1.1. Cloud Computing ........................................................................................................... 4

1.1.1. Advantages of Cloud Computing ............................................................................. 4

1.1.2. Disadvantages of Cloud Computing ......................................................................... 6

1.2. History of open fog computing ...................................................................................... 6

1.3. Fog Computing............................................................................................................... 7

2.SYSTEM DESIGN
.......................................................................................................................................... 10

2.1. Role of fog computing in IoT :.................................................................................... 10

2.2. Designing Goals ............................................................................................................ 11

2.3. Characteristics of the fog computing ............................................................................ 11

2.4. Components in Fog Architecture .................................................................................. 12

2.4.1. IoT (Internet of Things) Services Verticals: ........................................................... 13

2.4.2. Heterogeneous Physical Resources ........................................................................ 13

2.4.3. Fog Abstraction Layer ............................................................................................ 14

2.4.4. Fog Service Orchestration Layer ............................................................................ 15

2.5. Fog Computing and Data Management ........................................................................ 17

3.Fog computing
.......................................................................................................................................... 20

3.1. Distributed data processing in a fog-computing environment: ..................................... 20

3.2. Fog Computing Working .............................................................................................. 22

3.3. How Fog Computing will Help To Control the Traffic? .............................................. 25

3.3.1. Traffic Control: ....................................................................................................... 25

3.3.2. Role of Fog Computing in this Example ................................................................ 26

3.4. Modelling and Simulation ............................................................................................. 26

Report on “Fog Computing” 1

 4.APPLICATIONS OF FOG COMPUTING
.......................................................................................................................................... 28

4.1. Quality of Service (QoS) ............................................................................................... 28

4.2. Difference between Cloud Computing and Fog Computing......................................... 29

4.3. Fog Computing Advantages .......................................................................................... 30

4.4. Fog Computing Applications ........................................................................................ 31

4.5. Future of Fog Computing .............................................................................................. 33

5. ................................................................................................................ CONCLUSION
.......................................................................................................................................... 34

6. ................................................................................................................ REFERENCES
.......................................................................................................................................... 36

Report on “Fog Computing” 2

 Chapter 1

1. INTRODUCTION

In this chapter the basic introduction of fog computing is described and also the advantages
and disadvantages of the cloud are given, because of the disadvantages of cloud computing
fog computing is introduced.

IoT environments generate unprecedented amounts of data that can be useful in many
ways, particularly if analysed for insights. However, the data volume can overwhelm
today’s storage systems and analytics applications. The Internet of things (IoT) will be the
Internet of the future, as we have seen a huge increase in wearable technology, smart grid,
smart home/city, and smart connected vehicles. Fog computing usually cooperates with
cloud computing.

As a result, end-users, fog, and cloud together form a three-layer service delivery model.
Fog computing also shows a strong connection to cloud computing in terms of
characterization. For example, elastic resources (computation, storage, and networking)
are the building blocks of both of them, indicating that most cloud computing technologies
can be directly applied to fog computing. However, fog computing has several unique
properties that distinguish it from other existing computing architectures. The most
important is its close distance to end-users. It is vital to keep computing resources at the
edge of the network to support latency-sensitive applications and services. Another
interesting property is location-awareness.
In a Fog Computing environment, a considerable amount of processing may occur in a
data hub on a smart mobile device or on the edge of the network in a smart router or
another gateway device. This distributed approach is rising in popularity due to the Internet
of Things (IoT) and the immense amount of data that sensors generate.

Report on “Fog Computing” 3

1.1. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a type of Internet-based computing that provides shared computer

processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for
enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g., computer networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) which can
be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. Cloud computing
and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and
process their data in either privately owned or third-party data centers that may be located
far from the user ranging in distance from across a city to across the world. Cloud
computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale,
similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over an electricity network.

Fig1.1: Cloud computing

1.1.1. Advantages of Cloud Computing

• Cost Savings

The most significant cloud computing benefit is in terms of IT cost savings. Businesses,
no matter what their type or size, exist to earn money while keeping capital and operational
expenses to a minimum. With cloud computing, you can save substantial capital costs with
zero in-house server storage and application requirements. The lack of on-premises
infrastructure also removes their associated operational costs in the form of power, air
conditioning, and administration costs. You pay for what is used and disengage whenever

Report on “Fog Computing” 4

you like - there is no invested IT capital to worry about. It’s a common misconception that
only large businesses can afford to use the cloud, when in fact, cloud services are
extremely affordable for smaller businesses.

• Reliability

With a managed service platform, cloud computing is much more reliable and consistent
than in-house IT infrastructure. Most providers offer a Service Level Agreement which
guarantees 24/7/365 and 99.99% availability. Your organization can benefit from a
massive pool of redundant IT resources, as well as a quick failover mechanism - if a server
fails, hosted applications and services can easily be transited to any of the available
servers.

• Manageability

Cloud computing provides enhanced and simplified IT management and maintenance

capabilities through the central administration of resources, vendor managed infrastructure
and SLA backed agreements. IT infrastructure updates and maintenance are eliminated, as
all resources are maintained by the service provider. You enjoy a simple web-based user
interface for accessing software, applications, and services – without the need for
installation - and an SLA ensures the timely and guaranteed delivery, management and
maintenance of your IT services.

• Strategic Edge

Ever-increasing computing resources give you a competitive edge over competitors, as the
time you require for IT procurement is virtually nil. Your company can deploy mission-
critical applications that deliver significant business benefits, without any upfront costs
and minimal provisioning time. Cloud computing allows you to forget about technology
and focus on your key business activities and objectives. It can also help you to reduce the
time needed to market newer applications and services.

Report on “Fog Computing” 5

1.1.2. Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

• Downtime

As cloud service providers take care of a number of clients each day, they can become
overwhelmed and may even come up against technical outages. This can lead to your
business processes being temporarily suspended. Additionally, if your internet connection
is offline, you will not be able to access any of your applications, server or data from the
cloud.

• Security

Although cloud service providers implement the best security standards and industry
certifications, storing data and important files on external service providers always opens
up risks. Using cloud-powered technologies means you need to provide your service
provider with access to important business data. Meanwhile, being a public service opens
up cloud service providers to security challenges on a routine basis. The ease in procuring
and accessing cloud services can also give nefarious users the ability to scan, identify and
exploit loopholes and vulnerabilities within a system. For instance, in a multi-tenant cloud
architecture where multiple users are hosted on the same server, a hacker might try to
break into the data of other users hosted and stored on the same server. However, such
exploits and loopholes are not likely to surface, and the likelihood of a compromise is not
great.

• Limited Control

Since the cloud infrastructure is entirely owned, managed and monitored by the service
provider, it transfers minimal control over to the customer. The customer can only control
and manage the applications, data, and services operated on top of that, not the backend
infrastructure itself. Key administrative tasks such as server shell access, updating, and
firmware management may not be passed to the customer or end-user.

1.2. History of open fog computing

On November 19, 2015, Cisco Systems, ARM Holdings, Dell, Intel, Microsoft,
and Princeton University, founded the Open Fog Consortium, to promote interests and
development in fog computing. Cisco Sr. Managing-Director Helder Antunes became the

Report on “Fog Computing” 6

consortium's first chairman and Intel's Chief IoT Strategist Jeff Fedders became its first
president.

1.3. Fog Computing

The term “Fog Computing” was introduced by the Cisco Systems as a new model to ease
wireless data transfer to distributed devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) network
paradigm. Cisco defines Fog Computing as a paradigm that extends Cloud computing and
services to the edge of the network. Similar to Cloud, Fog provides data, compute, storage,
and application services to end-users. The distinguishing Fog characteristics are its
proximity to end-users, its dense geographical distribution, and its support for mobility.
Services are hosted at the network edge or even end devices such as set-top-boxes or access
points. By doing so, Fog reduces service latency, and improves QoS, resulting in superior
user-experience. Fog Computing supports the emerging Internet of Everything (IoE)
applications that demand real-time/predictable latency (industrial automation,
transportation, networks of sensors and actuators). Thanks to its wide geographical
distribution the Fog paradigm is well positioned for real-time big data and real-time
analytics. Fog supports densely distributed data collection points, hence adding a fourth
axis to the often-mentioned Big Data dimensions [4].

Fig 1.2: Fog Computing.

Report on “Fog Computing” 7

Fog computing, also known as fog networking, is a kind of decentralized computing
infrastructure in which computing resources and application services are distributed in a
logical and efficient place at any point, along the continuum from the data source to the
cloud. Although this is mostly done for efficiency reasons, it can also be done for security
and compliance reasons [4].

Fog Computing enables a new breed of applications and services, and that there is a fruitful
interplay between the Cloud and the Fog, particularly when it comes to data management
and analytics. The Fog vision was conceived to address applications and services that do
not fit well the paradigm of the Cloud [6]. They include:

• Applications that require very low and predictable latency—the Cloud frees the user
from many implementation details, including the precise knowledge of where the
computation or storage takes place. This freedom from choice, welcome in many
circumstances becomes a liability when the latency is at a premium (gaming, video
conferencing).

• Geo-distributed applications (pipeline monitoring, sensor networks to monitor the

environment).

• Fast mobile applications (smart connected vehicle, connected rail).

• Large-scale distributed control systems (smart grid, connected rail, smart traffic light
systems).

Report on “Fog Computing” 8

Table 1.1: Cloud vs Fog Computing

Cloud Computing Fog Computing

Data and applications are processed in a Rather than presenting and working
cloud which is a time-consuming task from a centralized cloud, fog operates
for large data. on the network edge. So, it consumes
less time.
The problem of bandwidth, as a result of Less demand for bandwidth, as every bit
sending every bit of data over cloud of data, were aggregated at certain
channels. access points instead of sending over
cloud channels.
Slow response time and scalability By setting small servers called edge
problems as a result of depending servers invisibility of users, it is possible
servers that are located at remote places. for fog computing platforms to avoid
response time and scalability issues.

Report on “Fog Computing” 9

 Chapter 2

2. SYSTEM DESIGN

In the previous chapter, we have seen the introduction of fog computing so, in this chapter,
the role of fog computing in IoT (Internet of Things), designing goals and the system
design and components of fog computing is described.

2.1. Role of fog computing in IoT:

1.Connected Vehicles: The Connected Vehicle distribution displays a rich setup of
connectivity and interactions: cars to cars, cars to access points (Wi-Fi,3G, smart traffic
lights), and access points to access points [3].

2. Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks: The real Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs), were
designed to operate at particularly low power in order to extend battery life or even to
make energy reaping achievable. Most of these WSNs involve a large number of less
bandwidth, less energy, very low processing power, trivial memory motes, operating as
sources of a sink (collector), in a unidirectional fashion [3].

3.IoT and Cyber-Physical System (CPSs): Fogging based systems are becoming a
significant class of IoT and CpSs IoT is a network that can interrelate ordinary physical
objects with identified addresses. CPSs article a constricted combination of the systems'
computational and physical elements. CPSs also organize the incorporation of computer
and data-centric physical engineered systems [3].

4.Software-Defined Networks (SDN): SDN concept along with fogging will determine the
main problem in vehicular networks, irregular connectivity, collisions, and high packet

Report on “Fog Computing” 10

loss, by supplementing vehicle to vehicle with a vehicle to infrastructure communication
and unified control [3].

5. Decentralized Smart Building Control: The application of this development is enabled

by wireless sensors positioned atmosphere in this case information can be exchanged
among all sensors in a floor, and their analyses can be combined to form unfailing
measurements [3].

2.2. Designing Goals

There are several designing goals for an adequate fog computing platform.
1. Latency.
It is fundamental for fog computing platform to offer end-user low-latency-guaranteed
applications and services. The latency comes from the execution time of a task, the task
offloading time, the time for cyber foraging and speed of decision making, etc [3].
2. Efficiency.
While at first glance the efficiency may have its own impact on latency, it is more
related to the efficient utilization of resources and energy [3]. The reasons are obvious
and quite different from counterparts in cloud computing scenarios:
• Not all fog nodes are resource-rich; some of them have limited computation
power, memory, and storage.
• Most of fog nodes and clients are battery-powered, such as hand-held devices,
wearable’s, and wireless sensor units.
3. Generality.
Due to the heterogeneity of fog node and client, we need to provide the same abstract
to top layer applications and services for fog clients. General application programming
interfaces (APIs) should be provided to cope with existing protocols and APIs (e.g.
Machine-2- machine protocols, smart vehicle/smart appliance APIs, etc) [3].

2.3. Characteristics of the fog computing

1. Heterogeneity:
Fog Computing is a highly virtualized platform that provides compute, storage, and
networking services between end devices and traditional Cloud Computing Data

Report on “Fog Computing” 11

 Centers, typically, but not exclusively located at the edge of the network. Compute,
storage, and networking resources are the building blocks of both the Cloud and the
Fog. Edge of the Network, however, implies a number of characteristics that make the
Fog a non-trivial extension of the Cloud. Let us list them with pointers to motivating
examples [5].
2. Edge location, location awareness, and low latency:
The origins of the Fog can be traced to early proposals to support endpoints with rich
services at the edge of the network, including applications with low latency
requirements (e.g. gaming, video streaming, and augmented reality) [5].

3. Geographical distribution:
In sharp contrast to the more centralized Cloud, the services and applications targeted
by the Fog demand widely distributed deployments. The Fog, for instance, will play an
active role in delivering high quality streaming to moving vehicles, through proxies and
access points positioned along highways and tracks [5].
4. Large-scale sensor networks:
To monitor the environment and the Smart Grid are other examples of inherently
distributed systems, requiring distributed computing and storage resources [5].
5. A very large number of nodes:
As a consequence of the wide geo-distribution, as evidenced in sensor networks in
general, and the Smart Grid in particular [5].
6. Support for mobility:
It is essential for many Fog applications to communicate directly with mobile devices,
and therefore support mobility techniques, such as the LISP protocol, that decouple host
identity from location identity, and require a distributed directory system [5].
7. Real-time interactions:
Important Fog applications involve real-time interactions rather than batch processing
[5].
8. Interoperability and federation:
Seamless support of certain services (streaming is a good example) requires the
cooperation of different providers. Hence, Fog components must be able to
interoperate, and services must be federated across domains [5].

2.4. Components in Fog Architecture

Report on “Fog Computing” 12

2.4.1. IoT (Internet of Things) Services Verticals:
• Fog nodes are heterogeneous in nature and deployed in a variety of environments
including core, edge, access networks, and endpoints. The Fog architecture should
facilitate seamless resource management across the diverse set of platforms.
• The Fog platform hosts a diverse set of applications belonging to various verticals smart
connected vehicles to smart cities, oil and gas, smart grid, etc. Fog architecture should
expose generic APIs that can be used by the diverse set of applications to leverage the
Fog platform.
• The Fog platform should provide necessary means for distributed policy-based
orchestration, resulting in scalable management of individual subsystems and the
overall service [4].
2.4.2. Heterogeneous Physical Resources
Fog nodes are heterogeneous in nature. They range from high-end servers, edge routers,
access points, set-top boxes, and even end devices such as vehicles, sensors, mobile
phones, etc. The different hardware platforms have varying levels of RAM, secondary
storage, and real estate to support new functionalities. The platforms run various kinds of
OSes, software applications resulting in a wide variety of hardware and software
capabilities.
The Fog network infrastructure is also heterogeneous in nature, ranging from high-speed
links connecting enterprise data centres and the core to multiple wireless access
technologies (ex: 3G/4G, LTE, Wi-Fi, etc.) towards the edge [4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 13

 Fig 2.1: Components in Fog Architecture.

2.4.3. Fog Abstraction Layer

The Fog abstraction layer hides the platform heterogeneity and exposes a uniform and
programmable interface for seamless resource management and control.
The layer provides generic APIs for monitoring, provisioning and controlling physical
resources such as CPU, memory, network, and energy. The layer also exposes generic
APIs to monitor and manage various hypervisors, OSes, service containers, and service
instances on a physical machine (discussed more later) [4].
The layer includes necessary techniques that support virtualization, specifically
the ability to run multiple OSes or service containers on a physical machine to
improve resource utilization. Virtualization enables the abstraction layer to support multi-
tenancy. The layer exposes generic APIs to specify security, privacy and isolation
policies for OSes or containers belonging to different tenants on the same
physical machine. Specifically, the following multi-tenancy features are supported:
• Data and resource isolation guarantee for the different tenants on the same physical
infrastructure [4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 14

• The capabilities to inflict no collateral damage to the different parties at the minimum
[4].
• Expose a single, consistent model across the physical machine to provide these
isolation services [4].
• The abstraction layer exposes both the physical and the logical (per-tenant) network to
administrators and the resource usage per-tenant [4].
2.4.4. Fog Service Orchestration Layer
The service orchestration layer provides dynamic, policy-based life-cycle management of
Fog services. The orchestration functionality is as distributed as the underlying Fog
infrastructure and services. Managing services on a large volume of Fog nodes with a wide
range of capabilities is achieved with the following technology and components:
• A software agent with a reasonably small footprint yet capable of bearing the
orchestration functionality and performance requirements that could be embedded in
various edge devices.
• A distributed, persistent storage to store policies and resource meta-data (capability,
performance, etc) that support high transaction rate update and retrieval.
• A scalable messaging bus to carry control messages for service orchestration and
resource management.
• A distributed policy engine with a single global view and local enforcement [4].
2.4.4.1. Software Agent
The distributed Fog orchestration framework consists of several Foglet software agents,
one running on every node in the Fog platform. The Foglet agent uses abstraction layer
APIs to monitor the health and state associated with the physical machine and services
deployed on the machine. This information is both locally analysed and also pushed to the
distributed storage for global processing [4].
Foglet is also responsible for performing life-cycle management activities such as standing
up/down guest OSes, service containers, and provisioning and tearing down service
instances, etc. Thus, Foglet’s interactions on a Fog node span over a range of entities
starting from the physical machine, hypervisor, guest OSes, service containers, and service
instances. Each of these entities implements the necessary functions for programmatic
management and control; Foglet invokes these functions via the abstraction layer APIs
[4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 15

2.4.4.2. Distributed Database
A distributed database, while complex to implement is ideal for increasing Fog’s
scalability and fault-tolerance. The distributed database provides faster (than centralized)
storage and retrieval of data. The database is used to store both application data and
necessary meta-data to aid in Fog service orchestration. Sample meta-data include
(discussed more in the next subsection):
• Fog node’s hardware and software capabilities to enable service instantiation on a
platform with matching capabilities.
• Health and other state information of Fog nodes and running service instances for load
balancing, and generating performance reports.
• Business policies that should be enforced throughout a service’s life cycle such as those
related to security, configuration, etc.
2.4.4.3. North-Bound APIs for Applications
The Fog software framework exposes northbound APIs that applications use to effectively
leverage the Fog platform. These APIs are broadly classified into data and control APIs.
Data APIs allow an application to leverage the Fog distributed data store. Control APIs
allow an application to specify how the application should be deployed on the Fog
platform [4].
Few example APIs:
• Put_data(): To store/update application-specific data and meta-data on the Fog
distributed data store.
• Get_data(): To retrieve application-specific data meta-data from the Fog distributed
data store.
• Request_service(): To request a service instance that matches some criteria.
• Setup_service(): To set up a new service instance that matches some criteria.
• Install_policy(): To install a specific set of policies for a provider, subscriber in the
orchestration framework.
• Update_policy (): To configure/re-configure a policy with a specific set of parameters
(ex: thresholds for a load balancing policy).
• Get_stats(): To generate reports of Fog node health and another status.

Report on “Fog Computing” 16

2.4.4.4. Policy-Based Service Orchestration
The orchestration framework provides policy-based service routing, i.e., routes an
incoming service request to the appropriate service instance that conforms to the relevant
business policies [4].

Fig2.2: Policy-based orchestration framework

2.5. Fog Computing and Data Management

• IoT is going to be a big driver for distributed (fog) computing. It is simply unproductive
to transmit all the data, a bundle of sensors generates to the Cloud for processing and
analysis; doing so needs a great deal of bandwidth and all the back-and-forth
communication between the sensors and the cloud can adversely impact performance
[4].
• IoT will create enormous amounts of data – there is a need for distributed intelligence
and so-called fast Big Data processing. Companies like Par stream (acquired by Cisco)
recognize this and have built and are building solutions to support ESP and fast
processing [4].
• IoT will create enormous amounts of data, driving a need for distributed intelligent data
management and so-called 'fast' Big Data processing [4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 17

 Fig2.3.: Data Management in Fog Computing.
The above figure illustrates the notion of some data being pre-processed and potentially
used in real-time whereas other data is stored or even archived for much later use in more
centralized cloud infrastructure or platform environment [4].
Every communication deployment of IoT is unique. However, there are four basic stages
that are common to just about every IoT application. Those components are data
collection, data transmission, data assessment, and response to the available information.
Successful data management is therefore very important to the success of IoT [4].
Data Management for IoT can be viewed as a two-part system Online/Real-time Front-
end (e.g. distributed nodes) and Off-line Back-end (centralized Cloud storage). The
Online/real-time portion of the system is concerned with data management associated with
distributed objects/assets/devices and their associated sensors. As we discuss later in this
report, there are issues pertaining to the need for “fast data” and distributed intelligence to
deal with this data.
The Front-end also passes data (in the form of proactive push and responses to queries)
results from the objects/devices/sensors to the Back-end. The frequent communication
between Frontend and Backend is termed as Online. The Back-end is storage-intensive;
storing select data produced from disparate sources and also supports in-depth queries and
analysis over the long-term as well as data archival needs [4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 18

There will also be a need for advanced Data Virtualization techniques for IoT Data. Data
virtualization is an approach to data management that allows an application to retrieve and
manipulate data without requiring technical details about the data, such as how it is
formatted or where it is physically located. An example of a leading company in this area
is Cisco, whose Data Virtualization offering represents an agile data integration software
solution that makes it easy to abstract and views data, regardless of where it resides. With
its integrated data platform, a business can query various types of data across the network
as if it were in a single place [4].
There are also data infrastructure issues to consider with IoT Data. Three important
DB/infrastructure issues to consider for IoT Data Management are:
• Hybrid Database Support: IoT database with the flexibility to handle semi-structured,
unstructured, geospatial and traditional relational data. The varied types of data can co-
exist within one single database [4].
• Embedded Deployment Database: IoT database often need to be embeddable for
processing and compressing data and transmitting over and between networks. Good
features to have are little or no-configuration at run-time, self-tuning and automatic
recovery from failure [4].
• Cloud Migration: IoT networks can store and process data in scalable, flexible cloud
infrastructure. The platform can be accessed using web-based interfaces and API calls
[4].

Report on “Fog Computing” 19

 Chapter3

3. Fog computing

In the previous chapter, we have seen the system design and components of fog computing
so, in this chapter, the overall working of fog computing for data processing, data storage,
data transmission, and data computing is described.

3.1. Distributed data processing in a fog-computing environment:

Distributed data processing in a fog-computing environment is based on the desired
functionality of a system, users can deploy Internet of Things sensors in different
environments including roads, medical centres, and farms. Once the system collects
information from the sensors, fog devices—including nearby gateways and private
clouds—dynamically conduct data analytics [1].

Report on “Fog Computing” 20

 Fig 3.1: Distributed data processing in a fog-computing environment.

Fog computing is a distributed paradigm that provides cloud-like services to the network
edge. It leverages cloud and edge resources along with its own infrastructure, as Figure
3.1. shows. In essence, technology deals with IoT data locally by utilizing clients or edge
devices near users to carry out a substantial amount of storage, communication, control,
configuration, and management. The approach benefits from edge devices close proximity
to sensors while leveraging the on-demand scalability of cloud resources [1].
Fog computing involves the components of data-processing or analytics applications
running in the distributed cloud and edge devices. It also facilitates the management and
programming of computing, networking, and storage services between data centres and
end devices [1].

Report on “Fog Computing” 21

It supports user mobility, resource, and interface heterogeneity, and distributed data
analytics to address the requirements of widely distributed applications that need low
latency [1].

3.2. Fog Computing Working

Developers either port or write IoT applications for fog nodes at the network edge. The
fog nodes closest to the network edge ingest the data from IoT devices [2]. Then and this
is crucial the fog IoT application directs different types of data to the optimal place for
analysis:
• The most time-sensitive data are analysed on the fog node closest to the things
generating the data. In a Cisco Smart Grid distribution network, for example, the most
time-sensitive requirement is to verify that protection and control loops are operating
properly. Therefore, the fog nodes closest to the grid sensors can look for signs of
problems and then prevent them by sending control commands to actuators [2].
• Data that can wait seconds or minutes for action is passed along to an aggregation node
for analysis and action. In the Smart Grid example, each substation might have its own
aggregation node that reports the operational status of each downstream feeder and
lateral [2].
• Data that is less time-sensitive is sent to the cloud for historical analysis, big data
analytics, and long-term storage. For example, each of thousands or hundreds of
thousands of fog nodes might send periodic summaries of grid data to the cloud for
historical analysis and storage.
In fog computing, much of the processing takes place in a data hub on a smart
mobile device or on the edge of the network in a smart router or another
gateway device. This technique is especially advantageous f or the Internet of
Things as the amount of data generated by the sensors is immense. The amount
of data is so huge that it is simply inefficient to transmit all the data a bunch
of sensors produces to the cloud for processing and analysis. A great deal of
bandwidth is needed and the back-and-forth communication between the
sensors and the cloud can also negatively impact performanc e. The latency
issue can be simply annoying in some cases such as gaming, but delays in data
transmission might become life-threatening in the case of vehicle-to-vehicle

Report on “Fog Computing” 22

communication systems or large-scale distributed control systems for rail
travel [2].
Fog computing was introduced to meet three primary goals-
• To improve efficiency and trim the amount of data that requires to be transmitted for
processing, analysis, and storage.
• Place the data close to the end-user.
• Provide security and compliance with the data transmission overcloud.
Fog Networking consists of a control plane and a data plane, where most of the processing
takes place in the data plane of a smart mobile or on the edge of the network in a gateway
device [2].
While edge devices and sensors are where data is generated and collected, they don’t have
the compute and storage resources to perform advanced analytics and machine – learning
tasks [2].
Though cloud servers have the power to do these, they are often too far away to process
the data and respond in a timely manner [2].
In addition, having all endpoints connecting to and sending raw data to the cloud over the
internet can have privacy, security, and legal implications, especially when dealing with
sensitive data subject to regulations in different countries.
In a fog environment, the processing takes place in a data hub 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 cloud performs resource-intensive longer-term
analytics.
Fog computing can be perceived both in large cloud systems and big data structures,
making reference to the growing difficulties in accessing information objectively. This
results in a lack of quality of the obtained content. The effects of fog computing on cloud
computing and big data systems may vary; yet, a common aspect that can be extracted is
a limitation inaccurate content distribution, an issue that has been tackled with the creation
of metrics that attempt to improve accuracy [2].

Report on “Fog Computing” 23

 Fig 3.2: UML diagram of fog computing.
Fog networking consists of a control plane and a data plane. For example, on the data
plane, fog computing enables computing services to reside at the edge of the network as
opposed to servers in a data-centre. Compared to cloud computing, fog computing
emphasizes proximity to end-users and client objectives, dense geographical distribution
and local resource pooling, latency reduction for quality of service and edge
analytics/stream mining, resulting in superior user-experience and redundancy in case of
failure [2].

Fig 3.3: Working on Fog Computing.

Report on “Fog Computing” 24

Fog nodes will Receive feeds from IoT devices using any protocol, in real-time. Run IoT-
enabled applications for real-time control and analytics, with millisecond response time
then Provide transient storage, often 1–2 hours and Send periodic data summaries to the
cloud after this at the cloud platform the cloud Receives and aggregates data summaries
from many fog nodes Performs analysis on the IoT data and data from other sources to
gain business insight and can send new application rules to the fog nodes based on these
insights.

3.3. How Fog Computing Will Help to Control the Traffic?

Fig 3.4: Block diagram of Implementation of Traffic light system

3.3.1. Traffic Control:
• These systems will communicate with each other say every 15 minutes.
The DM or the local server will communicate to the other local server servers every 10
minutes.
• If traffic is detected in an area, the system attached to that area will
communicate with the other systems with the help of a communicator. And this is how
the other systems will get information about the heavy traffic in that area.

Report on “Fog Computing” 25

• The sensors will detect the number of vehicles on the zebra crossing.
• If the number of vehicles is more than the system will not allow the
pedestrians to cross the zebra crossing unless there is a red signal.
• If the number of vehicles is less then it will give the red signal to them and then allow
the pedestrians to cross the road.
3.3.2. Role of Fog Computing in this Example
• If the decision-makers were on the cloud far away from the system location then it
would have taken a huge time in taking the decision as well as it would cause a delay.
• Smart traffic light needs to act in real time.
• Therefore, the Fog Computing concept resolves this issue.
• As mentioned earlier the Fog Computing benefits will help this Smart Traffic Light
system to work efficiently in real time [2].
Table3.1. The attributes of the Smart traffic light system
Attributes of a smart traffic light system

Geo-Distribution Wide (across region) and dense

Low /predictable latency Tight within the scope of interaction.

Fog-Cloud interplay. Data at different time scales

(sensors/vehicles at intersection, traffic
info at diverse collection points)

Multi-Agencies orchestration Agencies that run the system must

coordinate control law policies in real-
time.

Consistency Getting the traffic landscape demands a

degree of consistency between the
collection of policies.

3.4. Modelling and Simulation

To enable real-time analytics in fog computing, we must investigate various resource-
management and scheduling techniques including the placement, migration, and
consolidation of stream-processing operators, application modules, and tasks. This signifi-
cantly impacts processing latency and decision-making times [6].

Report on “Fog Computing” 26

However, constructing a real IoT environment as a testbed for evaluating such techniques
is costly and doesn’t provide a controllable environment for conducting repeatable
experiments. To overcome this limitation, we developed an open-source simulator called
iFog Sim. iFog Sim enables the modelling and simulation of fog-computing environments
for the evaluation of resource-management and scheduling policies across edge and cloud
resources under multiple scenarios, based on their impact on latency, energy consumption,
network congestion, and operational costs. It measures performance metrics and simulates
edge devices, cloud data centres, sensors [6].

Report on “Fog Computing” 27

 Chapter 4

4. APPLICATIONS OF FOG COMPUTING

In the previous chapters we have seen the fog architecture and working of fog computing.
In this chapter, the advantages and applications are discussed. Also, the difference between
fog computing and cloud computing is given in this chapter.

4.1. Quality of Service (QoS)

QoS is an important metric for fog service and can be divided into four aspects, 1)
connectivity, 2) reliability, 3) capacity, and 4) delay.
• Connectivity:

Report on “Fog Computing” 28

 In a heterogeneous fog network, network relaying, partitioning and clustering provide
new opportunities for reducing cost, trimming data and expanding connectivity. For
example, an ad-hoc wireless sensor network can be partitioned into several clusters due
to the coverage of rich-resource fog nodes (cloudlet, a sink node, powerful smartphone,
etc.). Similarly, the selection of fog nodes from the end-user will heavily impact the
performance. We can dynamically select a subset of fog nodes as relay nodes for
optimization goals of a maximal availability of fog services for a certain area or a single
user, with constraints such as delay, throughput, connectivity, and energy consumption
[7].
• Reliability:
Normally, reliability can be improved through periodical check-pointing to resume
after failure, rescheduling of failed tasks or replication to exploit executing in parallel.
But checkpointing and rescheduling may not suit the highly dynamic fog computing
environment since there will be latency, and cannot adapt to changes. Replication seems
more promising but it relies on multiple fog nodes to work together [7].
• Capacity:
Capacity has two folds: 1) network bandwidth, 2) storage capacity. In order to achieve
high bandwidth and efficient storage utilization, it is important to investigate how data
are placed in the fog network since data locality for computation is very important.
There are similar works in the context of cloud, and sensor network. However, this
problem faces new challenges in fog computing. For example, a fog node may need to
compute on data that is distributed in several nearby nodes. Data placement in the
federation of fog and cloud also needs critical thinking. The challenges come from how
to design interplay between fog and cloud to accommodate different workloads. Due to
the dynamic data placement and large overall capacity volume in fog computing, we
may also need to redesign the search engine which can process search query of content
scattered in fog nodes [7].
• Delay Latency:
Sensitive applications, such as streaming mining or complex event processing, are
typical applications that need fog computing to provide real-time streaming processing
rather than batch processing. propose a fog-based opportunistic spatiotemporal event
processing system to meet the latency requirement [7].

4.2. Difference between Cloud Computing and Fog Computing

Report on “Fog Computing” 29
 From Table 4.1, it can be seen that Cloud Computing characteristics have very severe
limitations with respect to the quality of service demanded by real-time applications
requiring almost immediate action by the server.

Table4.1: Difference between Cloud Computing and Fog Computing

Requirements Cloud Computing Fog Computing

Latency High Low
Location of Service Within the Internet At the edge of the local
network

Distance between client Multiple hops One hope

and server

Security Undefined Can be defined

Attack on data in route High probability Very low probability
Location awareness No Yes
Geo-distribution Centralized Distributed
No. of server nodes Few Very large
Support for Mobility Limited Supported

Real-Time interactions Supported Supported

4.3. Fog Computing Advantages

1. The significant reduction in data movement across the network resulting in reduced
congestion, cost, and latency, elimination of bottlenecks resulting from centralized
computing systems, improved security of encrypted data as it stays closer to the end-user
reducing exposure to hostile elements and improved scalability arising from virtualized
systems [3].
2. It eliminates the core computing environment, thereby reducing a major block and a point
of failure [3].
3. Improves security, as data are encoded as it is moved towards the network edge [3].

Report on “Fog Computing” 30

4. Edge Computing, in addition to providing a sub-second response to end-users, it also
provides high levels of scalability, reliability and fault tolerance [3].
5. Consumes less amount of bandwidth [3].

4.4. Fog Computing Applications

Various applications could benefit from fog computing.

• Healthcare and activity tracking

Fog computing could be useful in healthcare, in which real-time processing and event
response is critical. One proposed system utilizes fog computing to detect, predict, and
prevent falls by stroke patients. Fall-detection learning algorithms are dynamically
deployed across edge devices and cloud resources. Experiments concluded that this
system had a slower response time and consumed less energy than cloud-only
approaches.
A proposed fog computing-based smart-healthcare system enables low latency,
mobility support, and location and privacy awareness [2].
• Smart Grids
The smart grid is another application where fog computing is been used. Based on
demand for energy, its obtainability, and low cost, these smart devices can switch to
other energies like solar and winds. The edging process the data collected by fog
collectors and generate control command to the actuators. The filtered data are
consumed locally and the balance to the higher tiers for visualization, real-time reports,
and transactional analytics. Fog supports semi-permanent storage at the highest tier and
momentary storage at the lowest tier [2].

• Smart utility services

Fog computing can be used with smart utility services, whose focus is improving energy
generation, delivery, and billing. In such environments, edge devices can report more
fine-grained energy-consumption details (for example, hourly and daily, rather than
monthly, readings) to users’ mobile devices than traditional smart utility services.
These edge devices can also calculate the cost of power consumption throughout the
day and suggest which energy source is most economical at any given time or when
home appliances should be turned on to minimize utility use [2].
• Connected car

Report on “Fog Computing” 31

 The autonomous vehicle is the new trend taking place on the road. Tesla is working on
software to add automatic steering, enabling literal "hands-free" operations of the
vehicle. Starting out with testing and releasing self-parking features that don't require a
person behind the wheel. Within 2017 all new cars on the road will have the capability
to connect to cars nearby and the internet. Fog computing will be the best option for all
internet-connected vehicles why because fog computing gives real-time interaction.
Cars, access points, and traffic lights will be able to interact with each other and so it
makes safe for all. At some point in time, the connected car will start saving lives by
reducing automobile accidents [2].

• Augmented reality, cognitive systems, and gaming

Fog computing plays a major role in augmented-reality applications, which are
latency-sensitive. For example, the EEG Tractor Beam augmented multiplayer, online
brain–computer-interaction game performs continuous real-time brain-state
classification on fog devices and then tunes classification models on cloud servers,
based on electroencephalogram readings that sensors collect [2].
A wearable cognitive-assistance system that uses Google Glass devices helps people
with reduced mental acuity perform various tasks, including telling them the names of
people they meet but don’t remember.10 In this application, devices communicate with
the cloud for delay-tolerant jobs such as error reporting and logging. For time-sensitive
tasks, the system streams video from the Glass camera to the fog devices for processing.
The system demonstrates how using nearby fog devices greatly decreases end-to-end
latency [2].

• Mobile Big Data Analytics:

Big data processing is a hot topic for big data architecture in the cloud and mobile cloud.
Fog computing can provide elastic resources to large scale data process system without
suffering from the drawback of cloud, high latency. In the cloud computing paradigm,
event or data will be transmitted to the data centre inside the core network and the result
will be sent back to the end-user after a series of processing. A federation of fog and
cloud can handle big data acquisition, aggregation and pre-processing, reducing the
data transportation and storage, balancing computation power on data processing. For
example, in a large-scale environment monitoring system, local and regional data can

Report on “Fog Computing” 32

 be aggregated and mined at fog nodes providing timely feedback especially for an
emergency case such as toxic pollution alert. While detailed and thorough analysis as
computational-intensive tasks can be scheduled on the cloud side. We believe data
processing in the fog will be the key technique to tackle analytics on a large scale of
data generated by applications of IoT [2].

Big Data has emerged in earnest the past couple of years and with such an emergence
the Cloud became the architecture of choice. All but the most well-financed
organizations find it feasible to access the massive quantities of Big Data via the virtual
resources of the Cloud, with its nearly infinite scalability and on-demand pay structure
[2].

4.5. Future of Fog Computing

Just as cloud has created new business models, growth and industries, “fog can eventually
do the same,” who foresees the “excitement of having new vendors, new industries, new
businesses models come out of this as the industry, working together with academia to
address the challenges and solve real business problems with these new architectural
approaches.”
Fog computing “will provide ample opportunities for creating new applications and
services that cannot be easily supported by the current host-based and cloud-based
application platforms,” For example, new fog-based security services will be able to help
address many challenges we are facing in helping to secure the Internet of Things. Fog
computing was introduced to meet three primary goals-

To improve efficiency and trim the amount of data that requires to be transmitted for
processing, analysis, and storage.
Place the data close to the end-user.
Provide security and compliance with the data transmission overcloud.
Fog Networking consists of a control plane and a data plane, where most of the processing
takes place in the data plane of a smart mobile or on the edge of the network in a gateway
device.
Developing these services at the edge through fog computing will lead to new business
models and opportunities for network operators.

Report on “Fog Computing” 33

 5. CONCLUSION

We have analyzed Fog Computing and its real-time applications.

Fog computing performs better than cloud computing. Processing data closer to where it
is produced and needed. It also protects sensitive IoT data. fog computing will grow in
helping the emerging network paradigms that require faster processing with less delay. By
using the concepts of fog computing, if the same device can be used for these kinds of

Report on “Fog Computing” 34

processing, data generated can be put to immediate use and deliver a much better user
experience.

Report on “Fog Computing” 35

 6. REFERENCES

[1]. Cisco RFP-2013-078. Fog Computing, Ecosystem, Architecture and Applications.

[2]. Internet of Things by Rajkumar Buyya, & Amir Vahid Dastjerdi, 1st Edition.
[3]. Computer Science and Information System,2014 Federated Conference on 7-10 Sept.
2014.
[4]. F. Bonomi, “Connected vehicles, the internet of things, and fog computing,” in The
Eighth ACM International Workshop on Vehicular Inter- Networking (VANET), Las
Vegas, USA, 2011.
[5]. International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 |
pISSN: 2321-7308.
[6]. Fog Computing in the Internet of Things, Rahmani, A.M., Liljeberg.
[7]. H. Madsen, G. Albeanu, B. Burtschy, and F. Popentiu-Vladicescu. Reliability in the
utility computing era: Towards reliable fog computing. In IWSSIP. IEEE.

Report on “Fog Computing” 36

Report on “Fog Computing” 37