The world we are living in is brimming with technology and its advancements. By holding the hands of these technological advancements, our daily lives and how we do things have also evolved.
Speaking of technological advancements, the one thing that has been consistent and significant over the years is IoT.
The IoT, which is also the Internet of Things. It is generally a series of smart devices connected to a network. With other devices, it receives and sends a huge amount of data.
On the other hand, edge computing is a tactic for computing on location where the data is utilized or collected. It lets the data of IoT be collected and analyzed at the edge instead of sending the data to the cloud. Every free IoT course nowadays should have the integration of edge computing.
In this blog, we will take a look at the role of Edge Computing in IoT.
What are IoT and Edge Computing?
The Internet of Things refers to connecting physical objects over the Internet. IoT refers to any systems, physical hardware, or devices that transfer and receive data over networks without human intervention.
A general IoT system continuously receives, sends, and analyses data in a feedback loop. This kind of analysis can be carried out by humans or by combining Machine learning and AI for a longer period or in real-time.
If there is anything that is referred to as smart, it generally means IoT. If you are looking for an example, think of any smart homes or self-driving vehicles. Additionally, there are many smartwatches that IoT powers.
Edge Computing takes place at or close to any physical location of the user or the data source. By placing these Computing services closer to these regions, the users benefit from faster and more reliable services with greater user experiences. In comparison, the organizations benefit by being able to support and identify the trends and offer better services and goods.
Edge Computing is a way that an organization may use and distribute a common pool of resources across a wide number of locations to assist in scaling centralized infrastructure to meet the requirements of increasing numbers of data and devices.
Key benefits of edge computing in IoT
The Internet of Things is growing massively across the world. And the conjunction of edge computing brings further benefits to it. Let us take a look at the key advantages of Edge Computing and IoT:
- Bandwidth usage optimization
Many IoT devices send little packets of data to a data management platform for running analytics and deriving insights. At this moment, this goes well with data being streamed to a platform that is running in a centralized cloud.
In the forthcoming future, the introduction of a number of connected devices may lead to a massive strain on an operator’s backhand network. Even if the individual data packets are of few bytes, the entire thing when streamed in real-time from a lot of devices within a small area, the effect would be very large.
Edge Computing can allow the filtering and processing of IoT-generated data closer to the devices. Doing that optimizes the bandwidth by making sure only the data required for long-term storage and analysis is streamed to a centralized management platform.
- Latency reduction real-time
A lot of IoT applications are primarily enhanced monitoring systems. These are the things that analyze and collect the data. Then, it triggers the actions that are based on the insights that have been generated. There are some cases where it is done on an hourly or daily basis. It can also be done based on when it is triggered by a specific interaction with a device.
Edge Computing may provide a benefit to IoT when insights are needed in real-time. By providing computing near the IoT device, data analytics and collection take place at a location that is physically closer.
By doing this, the network latency is decreased as the round trip to the data center and back is way shorter. In this manner, edge computing can optimize IoT applications that need real-time actions.
- IoT security enhancements
A major headache for a number of IoT ecosystems is how to tackle security as more and more devices are being connected.
For instance, there is malware that can be used to grasp IOT devices to perform DDoS attacks. Edge Computing is something that alleviates this whole charade of unwanted malware attacks.
For organizations who are worried about storing their data in regions that have distinct data protection laws different from where the data is being generated, Edge Computing may allow many security benefits.
If the edge servers are situated at the premises, organizations can be sure that the data never leaves their own local perimeter and control all access to the servers that are storing the information.
Difference between an IoT and an Edge device
Edge devices are physical hardware that are situated in locations that are remote at the edge of the network with sufficient power and memory.
On the other hand, an IoT device is a physical object that has been connected to the Internet. It is the source of the data. An edge device is where the data is collected and processed. The edge devices can be a part of the IoT when the object has adequate computing and storage for low latency decisions and data processing in milliseconds. We now live in a world where IoT and Edge devices sometimes are used interchangeably.
If you want to learn IoT from scratch, you can check this tutorial out
IoT | Internet of Things | What is IoT ? | How IoT Works? | IoT Explained in 6 Minutes | Simplilearn
Wrapping up
In an industrial scenario, edge computing is duly vital to decrease the risk of downtime or any kind of data breach.
The world hasn’t seen the advancements of IoT yet. And with the integration of edge computing, the sky’s the limit regarding applications and Innovations.
