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What the f*** is the edge?

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Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#21

Post by HyperTalk2 »

mindslight wrote: post #9

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 m…

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

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#22

Post by 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.

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#23

Post by perl4ever »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #12
altcognito wrote: post #5

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

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

It seemed to be implying someone might want to, if they had lower latency. And the issue is how can you guarantee sufficiently low latency 100% of the time? You need a fallback, and if you have a fallback, why do you need such low latency?

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#25

Post by 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.

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#27

Post by 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?)

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#29

Post by mikeklaas »

HyperTalk2 wrote: post #21
mindslight wrote: post #9

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 m…

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

I was used it in math undergrad 18 years ago, so it isn't an invention of hacker news

Re: What the f*** is the edge?

#30

Post by zwkrt »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #16
zackbloom wrote: post #15

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 rath…

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

Read A Deepness in the Sky for a dystopian/cynical view of this technological advancement.
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