IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2016 - 75

I

t's useful to consider the theme of this issue of IEEE ConsumEr ElECtronICs
Magazine: mobile-edge computing (MEC). The theme itself seems to be within
the IEEE comfort zone in the sense that it is about solutions in the network gear
rather than external software that is indifferent to the topology of the connectivity
(also known as the network). We're now shifting to a world of software that is
independent of computing and networking gear. Perhaps the key word here is edge,
as though the Internet was something wide apart and we had to cross a boundary to
get to it. That is the modem model and why we use the term access the Internet rather than simply talk about interconnecting end points.
The other term is mobile computing, as if computing, that is software, was not
inherently mobile. At one point, mainframes, the gear we used to compute, were hard,
and all but impossible to move, so it's understandable that we revel in the ability to
tap into the power of computing wherever we are. Yet even in the days of timesharing
systems, we could use (relatively) portable, simple terminals (connected typewriters)
to allow us to tap into the power of computers wherever we were. The irony is that as
devices have become more portable, we've become more tethered! Many applications
are unable to work unless we have a connection to the rest of the world (also known
as the Internet) or, loosely speaking, a connection to the Internet-very loosely speaking as I'm trying to explain that there isn't a place called the Internet.
The concept of the edge is also important in terms of the business model of telecommunications being extended to connected devices. The Internet of Things is frequently framed as devices being peripherals on a network rather than first-class

©istockphoto.com/keith Bishop

By Bob Frankston

image courtesy of freeimages.com

Mobile-Edge Computing
Versus the Internet?
Looking beyond the literal meaning of MEC.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2016.2590158
Date of publication: 22 September 2016

2162-2248/16©2016IEEE

OCTOBER 2016

^

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

75



http://www.istockphoto.com/keith http://www.freeimages.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2016

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