
What the f*** is the edge? - wolframhempel
https://arcentry.com/blog/what-the-f-is-the-edge/
======
TeMPOraL
> _Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick
> client to butt back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what
> "the edge" is all about: In a world of increasingly ubiquitous computing
> power we are well advised to reflect on where our computation happens and
> how we can make the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal._

Which is exactly why we the cynics say we've come full circle.

Also, while the cyclical nature of client/server design seems to be a thing,
unfortunately underlying _ownership_ is not cyclical. For instance, a cycle or
two ago, the "edge" computer meant software I _bought_ running on _my_
machine. This cycle, it means software I don't have any stake in running on
machine I lease and have little control about.

This is the part of the trend that's worrying to me. Cycles of thin/thick
clients are irrelevant. Disenfranchising end users is a problem.

~~~
FreezerburnV
In case anybody else is confused like I was: there is a plug-in for browsers
that turns all mention of “cloud” to “butt”. Parent apparently has this plugin
installed, and thus the “to butt” part is “to cloud”. (Users of said plugin
will see me just saying butt a lot here :P )

~~~
daniel-alex
Interestingly enough I didn't even notice it until reading your comment. Looks
like I have a "butt" to "cloud" translator in my brain.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I know I have one, that's why I never notice when the extension is on (I have
it installed in Chrome, but I spend half of the browsing time on Firefox these
days).

------
zackbloom
We (Cloudflare) have largely stopped talking about the 'edge' for some of the
reasons cited in the article.

1\. No one actually knows where it is or what it means.

2\. It conjures images of classical ‘edge compute’ use cases like the self
driving cars in the article. Those use cases tend to be exceptionally
specialized (or just silly).

3\. Edge implies a core or origin exists, and maybe it doesn’t need to.

We would rather imagine a world where we embed the compute directly into the
network, putting hundreds or thousands of points of presence within a few ms
of everyone on earth. We imaging moving all the compute and storage there, not
just some fraction which needs ultra speed. If it is easy to run code close to
your users, and it’s affordable, there’s no reason everyone shouldn’t run
everything as close to the consumers of the Internet as possible.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
A fully mesh P2P computer cloud would be magical. Everybody is the edge that
way :)

~~~
pjkundert
We’re building that right now: [https://holo.host](https://holo.host)

~~~
goliatone
Following that link I learned about an ICO and then had some marketing
content. Honestly I wanted to learn from the link “how” you were going to
change things- maybe technical content?- instead I got this flashback when a
bunch of years ago you would see these land pages of gurus selling you books
about how they got rich online...

~~~
pjkundert
An overview is available in the Green Paper:
[https://files.holo.host/2018/03/Holo-Green-
Paper.pdf](https://files.holo.host/2018/03/Holo-Green-Paper.pdf)

------
Jedd
> Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick
> client to cloud back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what
> "the edge" is all about ...

You don't have to be cynical -- merely to have either been in, or have read
about, IT trends over the past few decades would suffice to understand that
it's _all_ cyclical.

The _cynical_ observation is that fashionable management trends and/or the
market's eagerness to engage in ill-considered change as a convenient
substitute for thoughtful progress, manifesting as regular vacillation between
a centralised and a distributed approach to compute & storage, 'keeps us all
in jobs'.

~~~
setr
It doesn't necessarily have to be due to an ill-decision; thick/thin client
cycling can be seen as the obvious result of network/compute cost
effectiveness ration swapping. When network is cheaper, thin clients make more
sense; when compute is cheaper, then it makes more sense to have it local, and
thus thick clients.

And due to diminishing returns + economies of the scale, as the market starts
investing in one, the other side starts to make more sense..

~~~
Jedd
You may be right, but I'm wary of the implication that 'the market' is
rational.

Also, if the market leans more towards network or compute (I'm not sure that's
a useful distinction, but I'll run with it for now) wouldn't the economies of
scale necessarily continue to accentuate the initial trend, rather than induce
an oscillating pattern?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Data likes to accrete, almost as if it has its own virtual gravity.

Cycles oscillate some, depending on compute speed and network latency.

But there isn’t as much oscillation as people think. 80’s/90’s style non-
networked personal computing was a rare exception to the usual rule of
networked centralisation with smrt-ish terminal access.

------
mindslight
One time, I got a telemarketing call from someone selling satellite TV or
something like that. I kept him on the line some time, asking all sorts of
enthusiastic questions about his amazing service. I then proceeded to ask him
how high up his satellites were, and if they could be giving God cancer. He
(obviously) did not have a good answer. I then disappointedly told him that I
was going to have to run his setup by my wife, as she made the religious
decisions.

This seems like that, modulo Poe's law.

~~~
HyperTalk2
When did people on this site start using the word "modulo" for something other
than the modulo operator in mathematics?

~~~
mehrdadn
The weird thing is I feel "minus" makes more sense. Isn't "modulo" remainder?
Whereas you're talking about the part that's left out, rather than the part
that is remaining?

~~~
firethief
It's not just taking away 1 x though; modulo is "if x weren't a factor"

~~~
mehrdadn
OH, so you're saying in a % b = c it refers to b rather than to c? That would
make sense... I always just read it as "remainder" in which case it would
refer to c...

~~~
posterboy
I don't think speech is mathematical, rather the opposite if anything. In _a
equivalent b modulo c_ the c is the _modality_ , the property or condition we
are interested in. The use in English is different to math's, because _Natural
languages are like mathematics modulo the rigidness_. A category theorist
would say _isomorphic upto_.

Here're two quotes taken from wiktionary

> _Thus, the underlying structure which I would assign to Navajo will be
> identical, modulo word order, to the one that we found to be projected in
> all of the languages studied in chapter 3._ 1990, Margaret Speas, Phrase
> Structure in Natural Language, p. 281

> _Moreover, in the role of consumer, each individual (modulo his location)
> faces the same array of goods and services on sale to anyone who can pay the
> purchase price[.]_ 2002, Richard Arneson, "Egalitarianism", in The Stanford
> Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Mathematically, these expressions could be modeled in a vector space where
"word order" or "location" are dimensions that are ignored. It's somewhat like
saying: left and up are the same modulo rotation; [1 1 0] and [1 1 4] are the
same modulo [x y lim(z->0)], if that makes any sense.

~~~
mehrdadn
I had looked up "modulo" in a couple dictionaries and only seen the
mathematical definition. I hadn't thought about it as being related to
"modality", interesting.

------
jpatokal
> "Edge Caching" it simply refers to the Amazon datacenter closest to whoever
> requests the site

I can't speak for AWS, but for GCP there are many more Edge and CDN points of
presence than there are datacenters:

[https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/](https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/)
(flip to Network tab in map)

And in Google's case "Edge" simply means where you exit the public internet
and get on to Google's own network:

[https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure](https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure)

Although there are also "edge nodes" (caches) located within ISPs outside the
Google network.

Disclaimer: I work at GCP, but not on networking.

~~~
hayd
It's still a "datacenter" though, right? Just a smaller one. It's not a
"region" i.e. there's no other services available other than cloudfront (and I
guess lambda@edge).

Or do you mean they might not be owned by aws (or Google)?

~~~
jrockway
Not really. Google literally just sends ISPs some servers stick into their
racks with other networking equipment. These are very "scrappy" compared to
what people think of as data centers, but if a room with some network cables,
an AC, and a rack counts as a data center... then sure, they're datacenters ;)

[https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global-
cache](https://peering.google.com/#/options/google-global-cache)

> Once registered and qualified by Google, we will send you a simple agreement
> for joining the GGC program. After you have electronically signed this
> agreement, Google will ship you servers that you install in your facility
> and attach to your network. Google will work with you to configure the
> servers and bring them into service.

------
mehrdadn
> real-world transmission times between e.g. London and San Francisco end up
> at around 150ms. That's [...] a catastrophe for self-driving cars needing to
> make realtime decisions.

Why in the world would/should a car in London be relying on a cloud computer
in SF to tell it how to make real-time decisions...?

~~~
Johnny555
I think the better question is why should a car be relying on a cloud computer
at all for real-time decisions -- what would that car do when it's in a
cellular dead zone?

~~~
qznc
There are edge cases where it is possible. My employer sells Automated Valet
Parking [0] where the video cameras of the garage are used to steer the
vehicle. Of course, this is a well controlled space where you can ensure
connectivity and the car will drive slowly so you can ensure safety.

I don't believe safe real time and 5G cellular networks can be combined at
reasonable scale. The latency is enough for some use cases, but
reliability/connectivity/safety is not enough. So we still agree here.

[0] [https://www.bosch-mobility-
solutions.com/en/highlights/autom...](https://www.bosch-mobility-
solutions.com/en/highlights/automated-mobility/automated-valet-parking/)

------
taikahessu
I think OP is missing the point here. As he being the sales rep, the only
valid answer would have been "Yes, it's on the edge.".

It is a question dedicated to find out if you yourself think the product is
good enough or how well you think it positions itself with the competition.
Maybe it's just me being stupid here, but I find it funny how the whole
discussion here has turned into a technical debate, which the original
customer's point IMHO clearly wasn't.

There is no edge. You define the edge by what you believe in.

~~~
wolframhempel
Author here: When talking to an investor you are only a "sales rep" to some
degree. You are the owner of a company looking to raise funding by selling a
certain percentage of shares, so much is true - but the mindset is more one of
finding the right partner.

Given a promising enough vision and execution there's no shortage of
interested VCs and the challenge is in picking the right one for the long
term. All VCs offer money, but many offer value beyond that. As the VC(s)
you'll choose will hold a significant stake including board seats and voting
rights you'll want someone with a deep enough understanding of your industry,
technology, market, sales or operational model.

Even if we were talking about selling to a customer here I would argue that
one's better off providing long-term value (and forfeiting a deal if one
can't) than just catering for any buzzword-driven expectation and watch the
whole edifice crumble a few months down the line

~~~
taikahessu
I totally agree with your points here. But just as few others have pointed
out, it looks more like a "shiny object syndrome" or it could also be a bit of
that the customer is not an expert of the software field and feels like
he/she's gotta bring something to the table to sound credible.

Your blog post sent me far into memory lane. I still remember a case where I
was a starting entrepreneur and I was selling a website remake. The customer
asked me if our CMS's database was relational. He clearly did not even have a
clue what that actually meant, but neither did I :) I knew it was "most
probably totally irrelevant" to the whole case (just as you seemed to ponder),
but my uncertainty showed. I was maybe under my 20s then, though I was very
confident I could deliver. But I was no salesman, more of an enthusiast geek
with a vision.

What he was basically asking me was "why should I pick your product instead of
all the others? Is this person credible?". It caught me so off-guard, that I
kind of froze back then and wasn't able to bring the conversation to a level
where our product would be compared to the competitors. Focus on the good
things etc. Maybe he did it just check, if I was actually aware of any
competition!

I didn't get that contract. I still remember it as a lesson learned in many
levels and your blog post somehow reminded me of that moment. Can't really say
if they are comparable, but there you have it :)

ps. My first thought today could be more like "what is this person scared of
the most in this situation, where does this kind of question stem from?". A
great sales rep might ask that question directly back. Cheers!

------
apendleton
> When e.g. AWS Cloudfront, Amazon's Content Delivery Network talks about
> "Edge Caching" it simply refers to the Amazon datacenter closest to whoever
> requests the site.

Kind of? If by "datacenter" they mean the things they said earlier that AWS
had 18 of, then no, not really. There are many more Cloudfront points of
presence that there are AWS regions (over 100 of the former). In practice
unless someone lives very close to a proper AWS region (like I do here in DC),
odds are there's a Cloudfront PoP much closer to them than a "datacenter"
(i.e., AWS region).

~~~
WaxProlix
It seems a bit nit-picky, but AWS has ~18 commercial _regions_ , but far more
datacenters. It's availability zone that's a data center (more or less), not a
region. So for each region you end up with 3 to 5 data centers or something
like that.

~~~
Dunedan
Even a single AZ might consist of multiple datacenters.

------
vvanders
> This front-layer of computing power is also referred to as "fog computing"
> or "dew computing".

The bit about self-driving cars talking to a server to make split-second
decisions is laughable but this right here just makes you want to flip the
table.

If you're requirements are so extreme that you need to be on "the edge" you
can do that today, it's called client-side development.

~~~
noxToken
People have been doing client-side development for millennia. That's ancient.
Who wants boring offline technology that's locked down from communication with
the cloud where hundreds - no, thousands of servers are using algorithms that
are constantly improved with machine learning?!

I kid. Mostly. Most sane people would agree with you. However some people
can't see the forest for the trees. Has "buzzword-driven development" become a
phrase yet?

------
Illniyar
The anecdote at the start of the article seems to me to suggest the investor
talked about "being at the edge of science" or technology - i.e. doing
something disruptive and new.

But the rest of the article talks about the location of data and servers and
it's relationship with the word "edge". Am I missing something? Why is the
anecdote unrelated to the article?

~~~
wolframhempel
(Author here) sorry about the confusion, I can see where you are coming from.
But yes, the investor was very much enquiring about whether it is on "the
edge" in a cloud computing sense. Having said that, it's important to stress
that many - in fact, most - of the VCs I've talked to were amongst the most
impressive, accomplished, knowledgeable and intelligent people I ever had the
pleasure to work with.

There is, however, a (growing?) number of VCs with a purely financial
background that approach investment decisions by establishing a framework of
future trends/ developments (Crypto, Blockchain, Edge, Sharing Economy,
E-Mobility and so on) and then vet potential investments based to how well
companies align with these trends as well as basic suitability criteria
(founding team, execution, traction etc.)

This isn't a bad thing per se as it might add a less biased view to investment
decisions than the one made by the tech-founder-funds-tech-founder echo
chamber, but it can lead to the level of detachment with the fundamentals of
what one's talking about displayed in this article.

~~~
Illniyar
Thank you for the clarification. "On the edge" seems so strange to me when
talking about edge computing/caching but I suppose I'm not in that industry.

~~~
theonemind
I work in cloud computing and also find it strange. At most, I have referred
to CDN "edge nodes", but I would've never said "on the edge", but "on the edge
node". In other contexts, I simply would've referred to "the closest
datacenter".

------
millstone
Please fix the scrolling under mobile Safari, it has no momentum.

~~~
LiamPa
And chrome.

~~~
wolframhempel
Thanks for the hint, will do (seems to be iOS specific, hmm)

~~~
dantiberian
Please just remove anything that interferes with the scrolling at all.

~~~
wolframhempel
Should be fixed now (there's nothing trying to interfere with the scrolling,
just an overflow setting to hide the hamburger menu that seemed to cause the
laggy scroll on iOS. (Hopefully I didn't make it worse - redeploying while
being Hackernews #1 is always a bit scary)

~~~
millstone
Much better now, ty!

------
lucisferre
Honestly anyone who invests on the basis on what layer of cloud computing is
currently being used to solve the problem can't be doing too well.

------
binbag
If you are willing to embrace the term 'cloud' \- as everyone here seems
willing to do, including the Cloudflare (...) guy - then you have already
admitted that you are happy with that type of garbage. 'Edge' seems trivial in
comparison. If you really care about this bullshit then you should agree to
avoid all these VC/buzzword/corporate/marketing bullshit terms.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Unfortunately, you need to live with those terms if you want money, because
people _with_ money use them. I assume they don't even care if a given
buzzword has any relation to reality whatsoever - all that matters is whether
the market (read: other rich and wannabe-rich people) thinks that buzzword is
hot or not.

------
Johnny555
_but it is not enough for cases requiring sub-millisecond latency and
incessant availability: Fields such as IoT metric processing_

Why would IoT metric processing be latency sensitive? Whether my thermostat
processes the temperature in 3 milliseconds or 30 milliseconds seems
immaterial.

~~~
wolframhempel
true for private IoT, but the industrial IoT is orders of magnitude bigger and
comes with a host of use cases where machines operate at 100 to 1000 Hz cycles
- and for stopping your 20.000 rpm milling machine or opening your pressure
release valve 30 milliseconds makes a lot of difference.

------
coupdejarnac
This seems like an exercise in quickly ascertaining what kind of audience you
have. If you are talking with someone who needs to feel like they are buying
"the edge" or whatever, adjust your sales pitch. Also, if you start off with a
buzzwordy pitch and realize you're speaking with an engineer, switch to a more
technical approach.

------
Nokinside
5G networks take heavy bet on the future of edge computing.

5G's secret weapon against other wireless technologies is reliable ultra low
latency (up to 1 ms, at a low failure rate). It's enough for network
automation in factories and factory robotics.

For customer applications it would make a sense to but graphics processors
that can do VR, AR, games and machine learning inference very close to
customers. It's and more practical for mobile users cheaper to get computing
power as service than carry it around.

------
feritkan
For the record according to this link, [https://aws.amazon.com/about-
aws/global-infrastructure/](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-
infrastructure/) AWS operates in 18 geographies (called) regions... These are
not data centers. There are 55 availability zones (AZs) at AWS regions, and
each AZ has at least 1 data center..12 more AZs at 4 more regions are also
announced

~~~
discodave
Also, there are over 100 AWS CloudFront POPS:

[https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/details/#infrastructure](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/details/#infrastructure)

And you can do compute in CloudFront POPS with Lambda@Edge:

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-
edge.htm...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-edge.html)

~~~
petrikapu
Only node.js available in Lambda@Edge

------
a13n
So annoying when people try to be fancy and break the default scrolling
behavior. That's one way to get me to not read your blog.

~~~
lostlogin
The author has commented and it seems this is unintentional.

~~~
troika
Thanks :-) - should be fixed now.

~~~
a13n
Glorious!

------
mirimir
While this is an interesting discussion, it doesn't explicitly make the point
that there's typically a tradeoff between network latency and processing
speed. Even if I'm using some server with 500 msec network rtt, I come out
ahead if doing whatever locally would take over 500 msec longer.

------
azernik
This is a strange use of the word "edge". Especially because, as others here
have noted, it doesn't include a clear indication of the "core", aside from
maybe large datacenters.

The older usages of "edge" are from the networking world, where infrastructure
and technologies have a relatively sharp distinction between
"core/backbone/trunk networking" (large trunk lines, intercontinental fiber
links, etc.) and "edge networking" (last-mile telco infrastructure, routers
handling one building or campus of a company, etc)

From this networking perspective, _both_ the end-users local device _and_ the
centrally-hosted server are at the edge, though AWS will have more reliable
and lower-latency connections to the internet core than your cell phone.

------
yy77
I think for most cases, "on the edge" means some devices on the sites of those
IOT sensors/small collection machine installed. In compare to "on the cloud"
which means on the server hosted by Amazon/Azure etc.

------
altcognito
I presume that nobody sane is sending critical self driving car decisions to
the cloud.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
It was only used as an example of something you CANNOT do with such high
latency. It was not implying some company out there is actually using a high
latency server for real time processing

~~~
Dylan16807
It's a pretty bad example of that, though. There are enormous problems
involved in the idea of remote piloting a car, but a 150ms feedback loop is no
big deal. It's slightly better than a human.

Especially if you look at the latency of one-server-per-continent, which is
still extremely far from "edge": you get something like 50ms or better. That's
easily good enough to control anything a human could control by hand.

~~~
jononor
Pretty sure there are systems where one would struggle to regulate with 20Hz
loop that humans can do. At least with easy methods like linearized PID. For
example an inverted pendulum

------
expertentipp
I deeply hope it's a buzzword prank so that non-tech people and managers will
start demanding "edgy software" and "edgy computing" and looking to hire
"rockstar edgelord".

~~~
jessaustin
At the very least one hopes that managers will start googling for "edging
videos".

------
ctvo
The edge, as used most often in my experience, is the entry point that
connects the public and private internet. It rarely has anything to do with
location (in almost all cases it's implied the edge is regionalized to be the
closest data center to the target).

For AWS: a Lambda at the edge, for example, may be a Lambda behind an API
Gateway that acts as the public entrypoint into infrastructure behind a VPC.
That Lambda is at the edge.

~~~
johncolanduoni
On AWS that’s a somewhat confusing way to put it since there is Lambda@Edge,
which allows you to run Lambdas to handle/manipulate CloudFront CDN requests
at their edge locations.

------
livid
I tried to search "ETSI MEC" in hackers news and got no results.

[https://portal.etsi.org/Portals/0/TBpages/MEC/Docs/Mobile-
ed...](https://portal.etsi.org/Portals/0/TBpages/MEC/Docs/Mobile-
edge_Computing_-_Introductory_Technical_White_Paper_V1%2018-09-14.pdf)

It is one of the definitions of edge computing, any comments?

------
matchagaucho
For all the effort we've put into moving spreadsheets and financial data to
the cloud, there's just no replacing the immediate feedback of a local Excel
app when doing What-If-Analysis, Goal Seeking... or a dozen other financial
tasks.

Keeping "the edge" in sync with a centralized system-of-record via intelligent
Excel add-ins is beginning to look like our big bet for 2019 (and beyond?)

------
jmount
A gem on this topic: "On the Design of Display Processors" (The Wheel of
Reincarnation) [http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-
sutherland...](http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland-
design-of-display-processors.pdf)

------
axiometry
Does anyone know what visualization tool the author used to create the AWS
architecture diagram? It looks really cool.

~~~
BOOSTERHIDROGEN
[https://arcentry.com/](https://arcentry.com/)

~~~
vxNsr
What's kinda mind blowing is that this is an actual business. I can't imagine
why someone would need this specifically for their cloud presentations. Like
isn't visio enough for everything?

~~~
ironjunkie
Wow! So the original story is written on the blog of a company that is
creating Chart of clouds architectures (and probably being on the edge)? I'm
amazed by how niche that business is!

also very nice plug to put your diagrams into the story

~~~
vxNsr
Right, I didn't even make the connection until the OP asked the question here.

------
ownagefool
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_edge_technology)

Not sure why everyone assumes the question was regarding networking.

------
iamleppert
Why the hell would an investor care about some technical performance nuance
that could easily be implemented via setting up some Cloudfront distributions?

Did she ask about your cache headers as well?

------
User23
Is it really a self-driving car if it needs a network connection?

------
potench
An article about the edge and no mention of Akamai. Last I heard even Amazon
Prime Video was being streamed on Akamai, not on CloudFront.

------
Animats
Did the terminology come from "edge routers"? Those are simply the last router
before the device which uses the network.

------
askaboutit
Wouldn’t a PHP app with app servers in locations in many POI then connected to
azure cosmosdb essentially feel like and act like”the edge” to a user.

Nuxtjs and nextjs are “the edge” apps. But the server being centrally located
especially for global ecommerce needs to go the way of the dodo.

Shopify being one. Some plus clients are near $800,000+ a year. Yet still no
database or app servers outside the US.

------
zmix
Would be interested in how the talk with his investor continued...

------
justaaron
guitar player from U2

~~~
thedancollins
Came here for this. Leaving satisfied.

Also, I can appreciate how some might feel like we are in a "fat client" world
again and in some cases I am sure we are - it will depend on who is wielding
the hammer as to whether it is used "properly" or the "most efficiently". I
love how the modern cloud allows us to deploy computational power to the
source of the data - if we so choose/need to.

------
perl4ever
FWIW, the Edge is a vehicle made by F∗∗∗.

~~~
stephengillie
Needs more edge-lord.

------
derReineke
I too enjoy thick butts.

------
stephengillie
Investor makes business decisions based on marketing fluff, more at 11.

