The cloud without the wait: mobile edge computing and 5G – Verizon Communications

It all starts with the cloud

The cloud stores your data, all your pictures and your phone contacts, and it processes information that helps make your favorite apps work. Cloud computing can do several things at once, really well: It can compute, store data and work with the network, all in one location. Many cloud providers, for example, have storage facilities that do cloud computing in locations all over the world. When you take a photo with your phone and send it to Instagram, it goes to a cloud facilitypossibly several hops and four or five states awaywhere all the necessary computing takes place, and then it publishes to Instagram. Its a similar process for reading your morning email or listening to a podcast. For things like that, the centralized cloud works really well, and the latency is low enough that your experience is just fine.

But certain experiences require a lot of data to move very quickly to and from a device and the cloud. Thats where MEC comes in. It brings the cloud closer to you.

The edge refers to the part of Verizons network that is closest to you: Your device connects to the network at the edge. And edge computing means bringing the cloud to the edge of the network closest to your device.

So how do you make edge computing more mobile, and closer to the devices that need it?

MEC is an entire network architecture that brings computing power close to any device thats using it. Instead of data going back and forth to cloud servers four or five states away, its processed just miles or meters from the device. For this purpose, Verizon has installed cloud servers in its own access points across its networks.

Link:

The cloud without the wait: mobile edge computing and 5G - Verizon Communications