1. FOG Computing

2. Internet of Things (IoT)
Connects internet devices – “things” (tablets, sensors, gateways, mobile-phones) to enable new forms of communication between things and people and between the IoTs themselves
These connections create a network of IoTs
This poses new challenges to the ways things communicate with each other and with people and the way data are manipulated once they are generated at the edges of the network
How, what data are transmitted over the network?
When, where data are processed or stored ?
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3. What is It? [Cisco 2015]
A term introduced by Cisco, a bridge between IoTs and the Cloud
FOG extends the cloud to be closer to the things that produce data
Analyze IoT data closer to where its collected (e.g., on IoTs) so as to minimize latency and processing load on cloud
Any device with computing, storage, network connectivity can be a FOG node
These IoT devices can be deployed anywhere with a network connection (Factory floor, vehicle, human body, etc)
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4. Cloud and Fog
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5. Why FOG, What it means to Business?
IoT speeds up awareness and response to events
By the time data makes its way to the cloud for analysis, the opportunity to act might be gone
Faster responses can improve output, service quality, safety
Todays cloud models are not allways designed for the volume, variety and speed of data
Requires new technology, infrastructure
50 billion “things” will be connected to internet by 2020
Moving all data to the cloud for analysis would slow down processing, responses, takes bandwidth and is expensive
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6. More issues
Despite Cloud’s advantages, health care, businesses, government, military organizations and entities that manage sensitive or classified data are reluctant to adopt cloud based solutions due to security risks of transferring data over the Internet
Existing data protection mechanisms such as encryption, failed in securing the data from the attackers
Software To Data Approach: bring software to the data rather than transferring data to the cloud
Transfer analysis results to the cloud
FOG addresses this problem as well
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7. Use Cases
Connecting new IoTs to the cloud creates new use cases along with new business opportunities
On a factory floor, a sensor on a critical machine sends readings associated with imminent failure  a technician is dispatched to repair the machine
In oil and gas exploration sensors register a pressure change  pumps must slow down to avert a disaster
Temperature on a chemical vat is approaching limit  shut down vat
CCTV cameras detect and intruder and alert security officers
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8. Application Areas
Smart cities: collect data on city activities eg traffic (change signals on surveillance of incoming traffic to prevent accidents or reduce congestion. Data could also be sent to the cloud for longer-term analytics)
Smart grids: collect data from smart meters at consumer's homes
Wearable Technology: data from wearable sensors need to be processed locally to inform user and also communicated to the cloud
Wellbeing: monitor environmental conditions in house, health status, in house operations for improving the quality of living especially for elderly, disabled
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9. What you get ?
FOG filters and analyzes the most time intensive data at the network edge close to where it is generated
Milliseconds matter when trying to prevent manufacturing line shutdowns and make the difference between averting disaster and a cascading system failure
Benefits include
Greater business agility, security
Deeper insights, improved privacy
Lower operating cost (bandwidth, storage, processing)
Sends data loads to cloud only for storage and further data analysis (big data analysis)
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10. What happens in Fog/Cloud?
Fog Nodes: micro data centers at network edge
Intelligent controllers and gateways collect data from connected devices
Receive feeds from IoTs using a protocol in realtime
Run IoT apps for realtime control, context processing, data analytics
Provide transient storage
Send periodic data summaries to the cloud
The cloud: public, private cloud etc.
Receives and archives data summaries from Fog nodes
Perform data analytics to gain business insight
Can send new application rules to Fog nodes based on this insights, new business operation plans etc
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11. Cloud vs FOG [Chiang 2016]
FOG will carry-out substantial amount of storage at or near end-user rather than on large scale data center
FOG will carry-out substantial amount of communication at or near the end-user rather than all routed through the backbone network
FOG will carry-our substantial amount of management, control and configuration at or near the end-user rather than on large scale servers
The decision on what functions move to Cloud or keep at FOG nodes is not always easy, depends on application
FOG and Cloud are inder-dependent and mutually beneficial
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12. Fog Architecture (by Cisco)
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13. Example Architecture
FOG NODE
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14. Security, Privacy and Trust
While FOG may enhance security, it presents new security challenges
User authentication at IoTs and gateways is an issue
Each IoT has an IP address
Easier to hack FOG nodes and IoTs
Malicious users can read/replace/tamper IoTs and their readings (e.g., smart meters installed at consumers house), or use consumer information for profit
In large networks, probably many un-trustworthily users  clients don’t trust each other, or are not willing to participate
More issues: Distributed control in a decentralized, mobile crowd of IoTs
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15. FOG Reference Architecture (RA)
The means of describing and understanding the requirements of a domain where the architecture applies
Proposed by OpenFog consortium: tech industry, research and academic institutions (est. 2015), still incomplete …
Fog RA should support
Low latency storage at/near end-users
Business deployment at/near end-users
Computation near/at end users to avoid latency/network costs
Management, network measurement, control, configuration near/at end-users
Allow analytics results to be securely copied to backend cloud
Certain functions are naturally more advantageous to carry out in Fog while others are better suited to cloud
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16. Architecture Building Blocks
OpenFog RA defines an infrastructure to enable building Fog as a Service (FaaS)
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17. OpenFog Architecture building blocks
OpenFog Fabric: infrastructure building services which allow the construction of a homogenous computational infrastructure (physical layer)
devices, protocol gateways and other fog nodes built upon heterogeneous hardware and platforms supplied by multiple vendors
OpenFog Services: network acceleration, SDN, content delivery, device management, device topology, complex event processing, video encoding, protocol bridging, traffic offloading, crypto, compression, analytics platform, analytics algorithms/libraries etc.
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18. OpenFog Architecture Building Blocks
Devices/Applications are edge sensors, actuators, and applications running standalone, within a fog deployment, or spanning fog deployments.
Cloud Services computational work that needs to operate on a larger data scope or pre-processed edge data to establish policies.
Security will ensure all the data transfers between the participating endpoints are secured through the state of the art information security practices. OpenFog deployment and the surrounding ecosystem must operate in a safe and secure environment.
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19. DevOps
Community and initiative that emphasizes communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and IT operations (
Rather than seeing these two groups as silos who pass things along but don’t really work together
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20. Software Defined Networking (SDN)
SDN ( architecture decouples the network control and forwarding functions enabling the network control to become directly programmable and the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted for applications and network services
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21. OpenFlow
In a classical router or switch, the packet forwarding (data path) and the high level routing decisions (control path) occur on the same device.
An OpenFlow Switch separates these two functions. The data path still resides on the switch, while high-level routing decisions are programmable and moved to a separate controller, typically a standard server ( ) .
The OpenFlow Switch and Controller communicate via the OpenFlow protocol, which defines messages, such as packet-received, send-packet-out, modify-forwarding-table, and get-stats.
OpenFlow is added as a feature to commercial Ethernet switches, routers and wireless access points and to allow researchers run experiments, without requiring vendors to expose the internal workings of their network devices
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22. References
FOG Computing and the Internet of Things: Extend the Cloud to where the Things Are, Cisco, White Paper,
FOG and IoT: An Overview of Research Opportunities, M. Chiang, T.Zhang,
OpenFog Architecture Overview, OpenFog Architecture Working Group, White paper, Feb. 2016,
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