4 ms·

With 5G that last mile between the metro hub and the user is only 5ms. This is critical for things like factory automation, autopilot, etc. Deploy your workload

With 5G that last mile between the metro hub and the user is only 5ms. This is critical for things like factory automation, autopilot, etc. Deploy your workload to AWS Wavelength or Azure Edge Zone 5G, and stick a 5G card in your factory tools or drones or whatever, and you're done. So IMO cloud providers having presence in all the big telco hubs is the future of "edge". Or at least a future. Disclosure, used to work at Azure Edge Zones.

fulafel 6y ago
But what's the intersection of critical stuff that needs to shave those milliseconds and stuff that is fine with the reduced reliability and latency variability of wireless comms vs fixed line?
- daxfohl 6y ago
  Those are important questions and nobody knows for sure yet. Another of the challenges is capacity planning. Since the footprint is so much smaller, there will presumably be much more significant spikes in traffic and load. Like when CIS is in town or something. Throw in all the variations like GPU or FPGA (which may be more common on edge), and it becomes challenging to balance available capacity vs cost. My guess is edge business model will be more like long term commitment than spin up and down at will.
  - fierro 6y ago
    this is a great point.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    Yep... 5G edge computing has been in the making for a while, it was talked about 10-ish years ago (maybe not with that name) when 5G was an upcoming thing and it must have been in r&d drawing board collecting justifications before it. So marketing has had a long time to build use cases already. Of course a "build it and they will come" argument can be made in favour of something we haven't yet been able to imagine but it's starting to feel far fetched. Or maybe it's just a question of how far-edgy it makes sense to be vs cost (the original idea IIRC was building capacity colocated with the base stations).
    - daxfohl 6y ago
      There was interest from several large companies in reserving capacity in several different locations while I was there. So it's definitely happening on some level. That said, that's kind of "boring edge", companies that just want one closer datacenter to run stuff. But, that's probably where the most money is. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a while to open up to general public where you can dynamically scale up and down though (beyond what e.g. Cloudflare workers provides) due to the capacity challenges I mentioned elsewhere.
virtuallynathan 6y ago
For what applications is 5ms more useful than 15 or 30? Much of that latency is in the last mile transport / multiplexing / buffering. I’m 7ms from Google Cloud/AWS Oregon regions from Seattle - distance to the data center is rarely the latency driver (with perhaps the exception of tier 2/3 markets - but then again, where’s my Cheyenne, WY edge zone?).
- daxfohl 6y ago
  I'd say it's still an open question. Certainly it's not going to be beneficial for websites etc. Mostly automation scenarios. Maybe games, maybe live video editing, maybe remote desktop? Or maybe it will be a big flop. I think it's worth the investment to find out though.

fulafel 6y ago

But what's the intersection of critical stuff that needs to shave those milliseconds and stuff that is fine with the reduced reliability and latency variability of wireless comms vs fixed line?

daxfohl 6y ago
Those are important questions and nobody knows for sure yet. Another of the challenges is capacity planning. Since the footprint is so much smaller, there will presumably be much more significant spikes in traffic and load. Like when CIS is in town or something. Throw in all the variations like GPU or FPGA (which may be more common on edge), and it becomes challenging to balance available capacity vs cost. My guess is edge business model will be more like long term commitment than spin up and down at will.
- fierro 6y ago
  this is a great point.
- fulafel 6y ago
  Yep... 5G edge computing has been in the making for a while, it was talked about 10-ish years ago (maybe not with that name) when 5G was an upcoming thing and it must have been in r&d drawing board collecting justifications before it. So marketing has had a long time to build use cases already. Of course a "build it and they will come" argument can be made in favour of something we haven't yet been able to imagine but it's starting to feel far fetched. Or maybe it's just a question of how far-edgy it makes sense to be vs cost (the original idea IIRC was building capacity colocated with the base stations).
  - daxfohl 6y ago
    There was interest from several large companies in reserving capacity in several different locations while I was there. So it's definitely happening on some level. That said, that's kind of "boring edge", companies that just want one closer datacenter to run stuff. But, that's probably where the most money is. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a while to open up to general public where you can dynamically scale up and down though (beyond what e.g. Cloudflare workers provides) due to the capacity challenges I mentioned elsewhere.

virtuallynathan 6y ago

For what applications is 5ms more useful than 15 or 30? Much of that latency is in the last mile transport / multiplexing / buffering. I’m 7ms from Google Cloud/AWS Oregon regions from Seattle - distance to the data center is rarely the latency driver (with perhaps the exception of tier 2/3 markets - but then again, where’s my Cheyenne, WY edge zone?).

daxfohl 6y ago
I'd say it's still an open question. Certainly it's not going to be beneficial for websites etc. Mostly automation scenarios. Maybe games, maybe live video editing, maybe remote desktop? Or maybe it will be a big flop. I think it's worth the investment to find out though.