Dr. Dilma Da Silva (Department of computer science and engineering, Texas A&M University)

Abstract:
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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.