Cisco unveils ‘fog computing’ to bridge clouds and the Internet of Things
January 29, 2014
Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Stephen Lawson.
If the hardest part of the “Internet of Things” is getting to the Things, Cisco Systems is offering a lifeline. The so-called IoT encompasses a range of Internet-capable devices that could be almost limitless: Thermometers, electric meters, brake assemblies, blood pressure gauges and almost anything else that can be monitored or measured. The one thing they have in common is that they’re spread out around the world.
From a network builder’s perspective, the biggest challenge this poses is backhaul, or the links between devices in the field and data centers that can analyze and respond to the data they spit out. Typically, IoT devices talk to a small router nearby, but that router may have a tenuous and intermittent connection to the Internet…
There can be huge amounts of data coming out of these devices. For example, a jet engine may produce 10TB of data about its performance and condition in just 30 minutes, according to Cisco. It’s often a waste of time and bandwidth to ship all the data from IoT devices into a cloud and then transmit the cloud’s responses back out to the edge, said Guido Jouret, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Internet of Things Business Unit. Instead, some of the cloud’s work should take place in the routers themselves, specifically industrial-strength Cisco routers built to work in the field, he said…
Read more from the source @ http://www.pcworld.com/article/2092660/cisco-unveils-fog-computing-to-bridge-clouds-and-the-internet-of-things.html
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