MEC - Multi Access (Mobile) Edge Computing

MEC - Multi Access (Mobile) Edge Computing is a key enablers for 5G technology to succeed. MEC is all about brining (frequently accessed ) Content closer to the end user and heavily depends on building new distributed data centers.

As of now lot of things are happening to make your computing resources centralized and place them on the centralized cloud (SDN/NFV) , these things will add up a lot of latencies to the the networks and that will worsen the user experience. So MEC is something which will try to compensate this by distributing the computing resources, Bring them closer to end user and improve consumer experience.

It is quite popular in Internet Networks with the name of Content Delivery Networks (eg Cloud Front in AWS) however this is little new to Telecom world and getting adapted slowly.

Back in 2014-15 , Nokia came with a concept of Liquid Application and branded it as Coming to a Cloud near you , I not very sure it was truly a MEC network or not but one thing is for sure that it was little ahead of time as neither we had the need (data rate requirement) of the user nor we had the networks resources (Strong backhaul Networks) to make it happen.

However now in 2020 things are different and both of these things (Consumer needs and Strong Backhaul networks) are the need of time and these two are the biggest enablers for MEC which in turn is the biggest enabler for 5G service verticals.

Contrary to previous technologies (2G, 3G , 4G) which were mainly targeting Voice/Data/Broadband requirement of the end user , 5G talks about new service vertical to target which are URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency communication) and mMTC (Massive Machine type communications) along with addressing the need of High data rates with eMBB (Enhanced Mobile broadband).

However all these new service verticals bring new challenges in implementation and 5G have various mechanism to address those needs (Slicing , Cloud, SDN/NFV , SBI etc) and that is not something we wish to discuss here. However one common thing in all (or most of) these service verticals is to bring the network resources closer to end user and that is something which is being addressed by MEC.

Definition from Wikipedia - Multi-access edge computing (MEC), formerly mobile edge computing, is an ETSI-defined[1] network architecture concept that enables cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network[2][3] and, more in general at the edge of any network. The basic idea behind MEC is that by running applications and performing related processing tasks closer to the cellular customer, network congestion is reduced and applications perform better.

However this one picture from IEEE White paper explain MEC in a nutshell.

MEC characteristics which is nothing but brining computing rescues (proximity and On-premises) closer to end user and hence reducing the latencies and making them aware about the user location as well as Network contexts.

However these characteristics also bring the underlying challenges and making the infrastructure distributed and hence also managing security and privacy concerns. However the even bigger challenge to open up your Radio Networks and giving access to 3rd parties to deploy their services.

As mentioned earlier , MEC enables all three service verticals for 5G

1) eMBB - Content caching , Video Optimization and Campus Networks , AR/VR

2) URLLC - V2V , V2X , tactile internet

3) mMTC - IoT , Industry 4.0, Location tracking etc.

Currently operator are building their (so called) MSC locations into Edge Data centers and this will give another boost to MEC services.

We will see in next couple of years , how this MEC unfolds and what new services it brings to enhance consumer experience and what new revenue streams it brings to the operators.

Hope you enjoyed this reading and look forward for your comments make it better.

#5G #MEC