*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Title: Frame, Rods and Beads of the Edge Cloud ABACUS
Ketan Bhardwaj
School of Computer Science
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Monday, January 11th, 2016
Time: 12 PM to 2 PM EST
Location: KACB 3100
Committee:
------------
Dr. Karsten Schwan (Advisor, School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech)
Dr. Ada Gavrilovska (Committee Chair, School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech)
Dr. Ling Liu (School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech)
Dr. Mostafa Ammar (School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech)
Dr. Ellen W. Zegura (School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech)
Dr. Dilma Da Silva (Department of computer science and engineering, Texas A&M University)
Abstract:
-----------
Mobile-Cloud computing has driven tremendous innovation in the computing ecosystem. Going ahead it faces formidable challenges in form of achieving sub-millisecond access
latency to cloud services and handling the huge amounts of data posed to traverse through
the Internet fabric. Edge clouds in form of distributed infrastructure elements present near
end users have been posed as a solution. However, there are there are a number of barriers
for edge cloud based services – Edge Functions – to become part of the mainstream computing ecosystem. This thesis proposes solutions to address the following three technical
challenges that lower the barriers for use of edge functions by backend services.
First, to demonstrate real world benefits that edge functions can provide for the well established Android app ecosystem, this thesis proposes three novel edge functions – AppFlux,
AppSachets and AppCraft – that address traffic due to app updates, provide efficient use
of edge cloud resources via app caching, and new mechanisms that lower app discovery and
adoption barriers. Second, to reduce deployment burdens on edge function developers, this
thesis proposes a software platform AirBox – a frame – that enables flexible, fast and scalable edge function deployment, dynamic provisioning and execution, while ensuring security
for its execution and stored state – rods. As part of AirBox, we propose and implement
models of secure generic edge functions – beads – that can be used as references or building
blocks by developers, and are referred to as ABACUS of edge functions. Third, to iden-
tify and ease development of edge functions, the thesis proposes tools and mechanisms for
characterization of required edge functions, with a goal of automating developer decisions
about their structure and their dynamic deployment. These contributions are validated
using network traces captured for three popular back end services.
