Compute node communication in the fog: Survey and research challenges: survey and research challenges

Fog and edge computing have given rise to applications that utilize cloud services at the edge of the network. To enable services at the edge, compute nodes are provisioned at strategic positions throughout the network in order to avoid bottlenecks and reduce latency. A lot of research has been conducted in this context, resulting in multiple computing platforms which organize the compute nodes using different communication types, i.e., hierarchical, peer to peer or hybrid. To better understand the role communication plays in fog and edge computing, this paper reviews key literature on fog computing platforms and identifies research challenges that emerge. The outcomes of this review also suggest that the communication type of a computing platform affects the functionality of the final applications.