International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS) | Volume VII, Issue VII, July 2022 | ISSN 2454–6194
A Comprehensive Comparison between Cloud Computing and Mobile Edge Computing
Farha Akhter Munmun, Adeeba Anis, Md. Shohrab Hossain
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Business and Technology
Abstract: Cloud computing provides a user-convenient, low-expense, and powerful computing platform for sharing resources like online storage, applications, and software through the internet. But with the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and massive amounts of private data in the network, the centralized and conventional architecture of cloud computing has become a bottleneck because of limited bandwidth and resources. At the same time security is also an open concern for cloud computing. Hence, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an extended architecture of cloud computing that enables data processing and storing at the edge of mobile networks. Instead of having some unique features (distributed architecture, parallel processing, low latency), MEC has also brought some security threats and challenges. In this paper, a comprehensive comparison between cloud computing and MEC has been presented in terms of features and security threats. Also, the security mechanisms for handling the threats are analyzed.
Index Terms: IoT devices, Cloud computing, Mobile Edge Computing, Security threats, Security mechanisms
I. INTRODUCTION
With the advent of internet technologies, people have become much more dependent on smart computing devices. Over the last few years, the popularity of IoT devices is increasing explosively due to lower cost and user convenience. So, nowadays individuals or any kind of organization want such a high-performance and smart platform where they can have access to shared resources without acquiring them physically [1]. Therefore, the idea of cloud computing has emerged. Cloud computing is a distributed and parallel computing system containing a set of interconnected resources based on an agreement between the consumers and service providers [2]. With the latest and advanced characteristics of cloud computing like resource pooling, scalability, and large network access, the security and privacy challenges also increase. Moreover, direct and unauthorized access to the cloud makes it more vulnerable to threats. Also, the centralized architecture of cloud computing increases the average response time and jitter because of the large physical distance between the end users and clouds [3].