Mobile-Edge Computing Versus The Internet?

Discusses the concept of 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 time-sharing systems, we could use 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.