From Cloud Computing to Fog Computing and IoT Development Eljona Prokoa, Dezdemona Gjylapib, Alketa Hysoc a, b, c University of Vlora, Vlore, Albania Abstract Internet of Things is considered one of the most trending topic in the world of Information Technology. The Internet of Things is a dynamic global network infrastructure with self- configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces and are seamlessly integrated into the information network. While Cloud Computing can today be considered well established, modern application domains such as IoT, autonomous driving, or even mobile applications trying to tap the full potential of future 5G networks require an extension of the cloud towards the edge, thus, naturally leading to the new Fog Computing paradigm. Fog computing is enhancement of the cloud-based network and computing services. Fog Computing extends the Cloud Computing paradigm to the edge of the network, thus enabling a new breed of applications and services. This paper presents the current state-of-the-art in the field of fog computing and aims to provide detailed survey. It also includes challenges and opportunities in the fog computing and various possible solutions to overcome those challenges. Keywords 1 Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Fog Computing 1. Introduction applications or services. The goal of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to enable things to be connected anytime, anyplace, with anything New emerging digital technologies such as and anyone using any network and any service. artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented This new technology has a major influence on reality, cloud computing, blockchain, the economic [1] and social fields, and also on robotization, the Internet of Things, big data, education, healthcare systems, energy etc. have produced a powerful disruptive effect management, environment monitoring, and in almost all areas of our existence and have smart cities by associating everyday objects radically changed the way we live, work, learn with Internet capabilities and Big Data or relax. Without consciously realizing it, analytics. IoT is developing in two directions: everyone is adapting to the digital era. The increasingly smarter physical devices and potential benefits of Internet of Things are environments and ubiquitous interconnection. limitless and IoT applications are changing the Fog computing [8] is a methodology of network way we work and live, opening new that transfer the data from the location, where it opportunities for growth, innovation and is actually created to where it has to be stored, knowledge creation. Internet of Things [2] is a whether that’s a cloud or any customer operated concept and a paradigm that considers data centre. It creates a distributed network pervasive presence in the environment of a which connects different environment and variety of things that through wireless and make association between cloud computing and wired connections and unique addressing IoT. This paper begins by introducing and schemes are able to interact with each other and describing the internet of things definition and cooperate with other things to create characteristics. Section III discusses cloud Proccedings of RTA-CSIT 2021, May 2021, Tirana, Albania EMAIL: eljona.proko@univlora.edu.al (E. Proko); dezdemona.gjylapi@univlora.edu.al (D. Gjylapi); alketa.hyso@univlora.edu.al (A. Hyso) ©️ 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) computing and IoT and Section IV presented all increasing at the rapid rate. These devices the aspects of Fog Computing as definitions, include personal computers, laptops, tablets, architectures and discusses fog computing smart phones, PDAs and other hand-held characteristics and IoT development. In Section embedded devices [5]. Most of the mobile V we conclude this study. devices embed different sensors and actuators that can sense, perform 2. Internet of Things-IoT, Definition computation, take intelligent decisions and and Characteristics transmit useful collected information over the Internet. According to data published by The internet today is getting Statista, at present IoT is spreading at a connected to a very large number of rapid pace and as of 2019 the connected devices or sensors of IOT. These numbers devices throughout the world were 27 were not envisaged previously. IoT or billion, and as of 2025 about 75 billion Internet of Things, alternatively known as connected devices will exist. IOE, Internet of Everything envisages connecting more and more consumer electronic devices, home appliances, medical devices, cameras, all types of sensors for temperature, pressure or humidity, etc., in addition to mobile phones and industrial IoT devices. The Internet of Things [3] is a dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces and are seamlessly integrated into the information network. Things are "smart objects", meaning they are capable to collect data from the Figure 1: Centralized IoT Architecture environment and communicate with the entire system. At the first level there are sensors, There are four essential characteristics for a microprocessors and communication device to be considered a ‘thing’ in IoT terms: equipment followed by the level containing the operating system for these objects [4]. There are 1. The device must be capable of collecting and rich variety of technologies which are covered transmitting data: IoT devices need to exist in by the internet of things and they are industrial environments in which information can be internet of things IoT, internet of services, collected and either sent to another device or customer IoT, Industry 4.0, and many more. directly to the Internet. However, these technologies cannot completely 2. The device must have the ability to function on themselves without the assistance operate with action-based responses: IoT of the technologies like the edge computing, devices can be programmed to act according to cloud computing, big data analytics, machine particular conditions. learning and a few more and all this is for the 3. The device must have the ability to gathering and processing the data such that they receive information: IoT devices must be able can be used for betterment of the operations. to receive information from the network. The IoT [7] is considered as the future 4. The device must be able to support evaluation of the Internet that realizes machine- communication: IoT devices by nature belong to-machine learning. The basic idea of IoT is to a network of devices that can communicate to allow autonomous and secure connection and with each other through other nodes in the same exchange of data between real world devices network. and applications. The IoT links real life and Internet of Things is one of the most physical activities with the virtual world. The revolutionary technologies developed in the numbers of Internet connected devices are twenty first century which has seen rapid telecommunication sector when researchers growth and spread in various sectors of and practitioners realized how the role of the livelihood. With more and more applications of final users changed from consumers of IoT getting developed day by day, its usage in information to prosumers, producers and the industrial, healthcare, and manufacturing consumers at the same time. In fact, the original and more recently in the field of education as paradigm on which the Web is based assumes well. that the core of the network is in charge of providing information that will be consumed at 3. Cloud Computing and IoT the edge. Cloud computing offers many possibilities for prospective users; there are however many different storage and compute At a basic level, cloud computing is a way services to choose from between all the cloud for businesses to use the internet to connect to providers and their multiple datacenters. Fog off-premise storage and compute infrastructure. computing, an extension of cloud computing In the context of the Internet of Things, the services to the edge of the network to decrease cloud provides a scalable way for companies to latency and network congestion, is a relatively manage all aspects of an IoT deployment recent research trend. Although both cloud and including device location and management, fog [19] offer similar resources and services, billing, security protocols, data analysis and the latter is characterized by low latency with a more. Cloud services [9] also allow developers wider spread and geographically distributed to leverage powerful tools to create IoT nodes to support mobility and real-time applications and deliver services quickly. On- interaction. Prosumers with mobile devices or demand scalability is key here given the grand IoT sensors, however, generate immense data vision of IoT; a world saturated with smart, quantities at the edge of the network. So, what connected objects. Many major technology precisely is Fog Computing and how can it be players have brought cloud-as-aservice distinguished from Edge Computing? Edge offerings to market for IoT. Microsoft has its Computing is exclusively about computation at Azure suite, Amazon Web Services, a giant in the edge of the network without any notion of cloud services, has an IoT-specific play, IBM cloud services. Depending on the source, Fog offers access to the Watson platform via its Computing [11] is either the same as Edge Bluemix cloud, and the list goes on and on. Computing or is defined as the amalgam of cloud, edge, and any intermediary nodes in between (this could be small- to medium-sized data centers within the core network of the network provider. Fog Computing must be more than creating a data center in the box, i.e., Cloudlets, to bring the cloud closer to data producers. Instead, Fog Computing must be seen as a ―resource layer that fits between the edge devices and the cloud data centers, with features that may resemble either. The goal of Fog computing is to decrease the involvement Figure 2: Smart and Wireless Environment of cloud by filtering out data, which is produced by the rising number of sensors. Instead of generating centralized data center, the processing of computational task should be 4. From Cloud to Fog Computing performed on multiple devices in network [12]. Since the latency calculation in fog computing A new paradigm known as Fog start from the end device to cloud, it reduces the Computing was emerging, which latency and bandwidth utilization in network. In seamlessly integrates the edge devices on Fog computing, latency rate is calculated from one hand with the cloud resources on the edge devices to fog nodes. This modified other, to overcome all the limitations of utilization of edge resource provides faster Edge Computing as well. Fog computing [10] communication. This paradigm [13] has to has been initially introduced in the provide the power of execution, monitoring and analyzing IoT services. As also pointed out by It is a highly virtualized platform that offers the Open Fog Consortium, the goal of Fog storage, compute, and networking services Computing is to provide a set of methods and between the traditional cloud computing data tools to create a continuum between edge and centers and end devices. Fog computing can be cloud. For this, Fog Computing [14] characterized by low latency, location technologies especially need to enable fluid awareness, edge location, interoperability, real- data movement between cloud services and time interaction between data and cloud, and edge, in both directions, while satisfying support for online interplay with the cloud. Fog application constraints in terms of quality of applications [21] involve real-time interactions service (QoS). Such data movement may also instead of batch processing, and they often be accompanied by movement of computation communicate directly with mobile devices. Fog – both in the same way and in a complimentary nodes also come with different form factors, fashion compared to data movement. In an IoT deployed in various environments. environment, it is important to understand the relationship between Fog and cloud computing 4.2. Characteristics of Fog and assess the impact of fog computing on the IoT service delay and quality of service. Fog Computing computing [22] paradigm offers several features, which make it suitable for IoT enabled Fog computing possess various characteristics, systems. These include low latency due to close some of them are listed below: Heterogeneity: proximity of the fog services near the network Fog Computing is a highly virtualized platform edge, conservation of network bandwidth due that yields compute, storage, and networking to transmission of selective and filtered data, services between end devices and traditional and increased response time due to shorter Cloud Computing Data Centers, typically, but physical distance between data source and fog not elite located at the edge of network. nodes relative to the cloud. Fog computing is a Compute, storage, and networking resources heterogeneous [15] hyper distributed cloud are the building blocks of both the Cloud and infrastructure paradigm, ranging from small the Fog . Edge location: The origins of the Fog compute nodes close to the end-users to can [18] be traced to early proposals to support traditional distant data centres. With greater endpoints with rich services at the edge of the proximity to the end users, delay and jitter in network, including applications with low the delay can be reduced, and intermediate latency requirements (e.g. gaming, video network reliability improved. streaming, augmented reality. Geographical distribution: In sharp contrast to the more centralized Cloud, the services and applications 4.1. Characterization of Fog targeted by the Fog demand widely distributed Computing deployments. The Fog, will play an active role in delivering high quality streaming to moving According to IDC, 45% of the data worldwide vehicles, through proxies along highways and will move closer to the network edge by 2025, tracks. and 10% of the data will be produced by edge devices such as phones, smart-watches, 4.3. Architecture of Fog connected vehicles, and so on. Fog computing is believed to be the only technology that will Computing stand the test of time and even beat Artificial Intelligence, IoT app development, and 5G in In a traditional network, centralized hub the next five years. Cloud and fog computing can’t maintain high volume data which is [17] share overlapping features, but fog created by different devices or transactions. Old computing has additional attributes such as data warehouse model techniques can take location awareness, edge deployment and a more response time and can’t get the low large number of geographically distributed latency rate as required by users [7]. Fog nodes in order to offer a mobile, low latency computing delivers facilities with low latency and real-time interaction. and less traffic congestion [14]. The fog layer contains geo- distributed fog servers those process computations at the end point of system. Each fog server has equivalent the Cloud provides global centralization. Many computing capabilities to process a huge applications require both Fog localization, and amount of workload at the edge. Thus, a very Cloud globalization, particularly for analytics less amount of workload is moved to the cloud and Big Data. for storage purpose and analytic processing. Therefore, fog computing becomes a major 4.4.1. Smart cities driver of the IoT in education systems. The connected devices are increased which produces a large amount of data and Data centers are not developed to handle the connectivity of that data to a central cloud is growing demands of smart city apps. As become possible [19]. Fog computing provides more and more people started using more the facility for analyzed the data locally and to IoT devices, more data would be transmitted choose what kind of data needs to transfer to and accessed. Fog computing can help such ill- centralized cloud. equipped smart grids to deliver the actual value of IoT app development. Large-scale sensor networks: To monitor the environment and the Smart Grid are other examples of inherently distributed systems, requiring distributed computing and storage resources. Very large number of nodes, as a consequence of the wide geo-distribution, as evidenced in sensor networks in general and the Smart Grid in particular. Support for mobility: It is essential for many Fog applications to communicate directly with mobile devices, and therefore support mobility techniques, such as the LISP protocol, that decouple host identity from location identity, and require a distributed Figure 3: Fog Computing Architecture directory system. Real-time interactions: Important Fog applications involve real-time interactions rather than batch processing. 4.4. Fog computing and IoT app development the connection 4.4.2 Utilities There are almost 31 billion IoT devices in The term “utilities” includes applications for use as of today. No wonder we produce 2.5 hospitals, transportation, law enforcement, and quintillion bytes of data per day. It is obvious so that need the latest technology to deliver data we need an alternative to the traditional method to support their operations. For instance, of handling data. That is where fog computing information about carbon emissions, potholes enters the picture. on the road, and water leakages can be used to When an application or a device collects update billing information, save lives, and enormous volumes of information, efficient improve operations. data storage becomes a challenge, not to forget, costly, and complicated. Heavy data puts a load on the network bandwidth. Setting up large data 4.5. How Fog computing enhances centers to store and organize this data is the value of the Internet of Things expensive! solutions Fog computing [20] gathers and distributes storage, computing, and network connectivity services, reduces energy consumption, IoT and end-users are becoming enhances the data’s performance and utility, increasingly powerful. A large amount of data and minimizes space and time complexity. is now being processed directly on the cloud. While Fog nodes provide localization, therefore Adding to that, here are six benefits that fog enabling low latency and context awareness, computing can deliver to the IoT app 5. Conclusions development process: In this survey we have comprehensively 1. Greater business agility presented all the aspects of Fog Computing as definitions, characteristics and With the right tools, you can build fog architectures. In Fog Computing, application applications and deploy them as needed. Such services run on both edge nodes with low applications program the device to operate in latency access but very limited resource the way a user wants. capabilities and in the cloud with higher access latency but practically unlimited resources as 2. Better security well as on possible intermediary nodes. Fog computing as a new paradigm is a yet virtually Fog computing acts as a proxy for resource- unexplored field that offers a number of open constrained devices and updates their software research challenges As demand for vast and security credentials. It deploys fog nodes compute and storage needs have arisen, very using the same policy, procedures, and controls nicely handled by public cloud providers. But used in other parts of the IT environment. the cost of transport and speed of processing has When data is processed by a large number of also increased, which is challenging for many nodes in a complicated distributed system, it is uses cases such as mission-critical service. As a easier to monitor nearby connected devices’ result, many IoT initiatives are now distributing security status. this computing power across the edge network, data centers, and public cloud. Fog computing 3. Network bandwidth efficiency has the facility to connect everything and become a significate part of our environment. Fog computing enables fast and efficient data processing based on application 6. References demands, computing resources, and available networking. Pieces of information [1] Dr. Ovidiu Vermesan SINTEF, Norway, are combined at different points instead of Dr. Peter FriessEU, Belgium, “Internet of just sending them to one data via one Things–From Research and Innovation to Market Deployment”, river publishers’ channel. series in communications, 2014 This reduces the volumes of data required [2] Karen Rose, Scott Eldridge, Lyman to be transferred to the cloud, thus saving Chapin, “The Internet of Things: An network bandwidth and considerably Overview Understanding the Issues and reducing costs. Challenges of a More Connected World”, The Internet Society (ISOC), 2015. 4. Uninterrupted services [3] Pallavi Sethi and Smruti Sarangi, "Internet of things: architectures, Fog computing can run on its own and ensure protocols, and applications." Journal of uninterrupted services even when the network Electrical and Computer Engineering connectivity to the cloud hampers. Moreover, vol 2017, pages 1-20, 2017. due to multiple interconnected channels, loss of [4] Mohammed Abdmeziem, Djamel connection is almost impossible. Tandjaoui and Imed Romdhani, 5. Improved user experience "Architecting the internet of things: state of the art.", Springer Cham, vol 36, pages 55- 58, 2016. Edge nodes run power-efficient protocols such https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2 as Zigbee, Bluetooth, or Z-Wave. Fog 75352749_Architecting_the_Internet_of_ computing enables instant communication Things_State_of_the_Art between devices and end-users, irrespective of [5] Margaret Rouse, “Internet of Things network connectivity, thus enhancing user (IoT)”, 2016. experience. [6] Agarwal, S. and S. Pati, Study of Internet [17] Bala, M.I. and Chishti, M.A. (2019), of Things. International Journal for "Survey of applications, challenges and Scientific Research & Development, 2016. opportunities in fog [7] Martín Serrano, Payam Barnaghi, computing", International Journal of Francois Carrez, Philippe Cousin, Pervasive Computing and Ovidiu Vermesan, Peter Friess, Communications, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 80- “Internet of Things Semantic 96. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPCC-06- Interoperability: Research Challenges, 2019-059 [18] Vaquero LM, Rodero-Merino L Best Practices, Recommendations and Finding your way in the Fog: Towards a Next Steps”, European research comprehensive definition of Fog cluster on the internet of things, computing. ACM SIGCOMM Comp IERC, 2015. Commun Rev 2014; 44(5): 27-32. [8] Bonomi, Flavio, et al. "Fog computing and [19] Harshit Gupta, Amir Vahid Dastjerdi, its role in the internet of things." Soumya K. Ghosh, and Rajkumar Buyya, Proceedings of thefirst edition of the MCC 2016. iFogSim: A Toolkit for Modeling workshop on Mobile cloud computing. and Simulation of Resource Management ACM, 2012, pp. 13-16). Techniques in Internet of Things, Edge and [9] Schauhan, Cs. (2016). A Shift from Cloud Fog Computing Environments. ArXiv Computing Model to Fog Computing. preprint arXiv: 1606, 02007, Technical Journal of Applied Computing Report CLOUDS-TR2016-2, Cloud [10] H. Gupta, A. Vahid Dastjerdi, S. K. Computing and Distributed Systems Ghosh, and R. Buyya, “iFogSim: A toolkit Laboratory, The University of Melbourne for modeling and simulation of resource (2016). management techniques in the Internet of [20] Tadapaneni, N. R. (2019). Role of Fog Things, Edge and Fog computing Computing in the Internet of Things. environments,” Softw. - Pract. Exp., vol. International Journal of Scientific Research 47, no. 9, pp. 1275–1296, 2017. and Engineering Trends. [11] R. Mahmud, R. Kotagiri, and R. [21] Nisha Peter,ǁ FOG Computing and Buyya, “Fog Computing: A Taxonomy, ItsReal Time Applications International Survey and Future Directions,” pp. 1–28, Journal of Emerging Technology 2016. Advanced Engineering, Volume 5, Issue 6, [12] A. V. Dastjerdi, H. Gupta, R. N. June 2015. Calheiros, S. K. Ghosh, and R. Buyya, [22] Aazam, M.; Huh, E.N. Fog computing “Fog Computing: Principles, architectures, and smart gateway based communication and applications,” Internet Things Princ. for cloud of things. In Proceedings of the Paradig., pp. 61–75, 2016. 2014 International Conference on Future [13] M. Aazam and E. N. Huh, “Fog Internet of Things and Cloud 2014, computing and smart gateway based Barcelona, Spain, 27–29 August 2014; pp. communication for cloud of things,” Proc. 464–470 - 2014 Int. Conf. Futur. Internet Things [23] Aazam, M.; Huh, E.N. Fog computing Cloud, FiCloud 2014, pp. 464–470, 2014. and smart gateway based communication [14] M. Chiang and T. Zhang, “Fog and IoT: for cloud of things. In Proceedings of the An Overview of Research Opportunities,” 2014 International Conference on Future IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 3, no. 6, pp. Internet of Things and Cloud 2014, 854–864, 2016. Barcelona, Spain, 27–29 August 2014; pp. [15] Cisco Systems, “Fog Computing and 464–470 the Internet of Things: Extend the Cloud to Where the Things Are,” Www.Cisco.Com, p. 6, 2016. [16] Hou, X.,Li,Y., Chen,M., Wu,D., Jin,D., Chen,S.,:Vehicular Fog Computing: A view point of vehicles as the infrastructures. IEEE transactions on vehicular technology ( June 2016)