Cloud and Edge Networking

1Introduction to Edge and Cloud Networking

1.1. Introduction to digital infrastructure

For the next 10 years, digital infrastructure in Cloud Networking will establish itself as the basic standard. This standard has been adopted by all network and telecommunications equipment manufacturers. It consists of four elements: the terminal equipment, an antenna, an optical fiber and a data center. To understand the reasons that led to this architecture, we must start with the basic element: virtualization.

The virtualization process is described in Figure 1.1. This process is a result of moving from a physical machine to a logical machine. The first step is to write code that does exactly the same thing as the physical machine. Assuming the physical machine is a router, the virtual router code must perform the same routing and send the incoming packet processed by the logical code on the same outgoing line as the physical machine would.

The next step is to compare the performance of the physical machine and the logical machine by running it on the processor of the physical machine. Without accelerator hardware such as ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) or Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs), performance will easily drop by a factor of at least 10 and possibly as much as 100. If we assume this loss by a factor of 20, it would take a processor 20 times more powerful to achieve the same performance, which is not a problem with data center power. However, since energy ...