Cloud and Edge Networking

16The Future of Edge and Cloud Networking

The future of Edge and Cloud Networking can be imagined through the research done for 6G. This new generation seems far away, in fact its study started in 2020 and it will take almost a decade to arrive at a specification. The years 2020–2024 will be mainly devoted to the different possible ways to achieve a new generation.

Figure 16.1. Specifications for moving from 5G to 6G.

Figure 16.1 shows the dates of the planned specifications, but they are obviously not definitive, far from it. On average, a new specification appears every 2 years. On this diagram, the first three releases 15, 16 and 17 correspond to the three phases of 5G. The first one concerns 5G radio, called NR (New Radio), that is, the part between the terminal equipment and the antenna. The second specifies the radio access network and the core network. Finally, the third phase is largely devoted to 5G applications.

The 5G revolution is represented by the appearance of data centers on the Edge: MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) data centers. The objective of this architecture is to offer services positioned in the data center, which must be less than 10 km from the user to ensure a latency time of no more than 1 ms. This solution enables a whole new set of services to be offered from virtual machines, services that cannot be supported by current architectures that position ...