Evaluation of fog application placement algorithms: a survey

Abstract

AbstractRecently, the concept of cloud computing has been extended towards the network edge. Devices near the network edge, called fog nodes, offer computing capabilities with low latency to nearby end devices. In the resulting fog computing paradigm (also called edge computing), application components can be deployed to a distributed infrastructure, comprising both cloud data centers and fog nodes. The decision which infrastructure nodes should host which application components has a large impact on important system parameters like performance and energy consumption. Several algorithms have been proposed to find a good placement of applications on a fog infrastructure. In most cases, the proposed algorithms were evaluated experimentally by the respective authors. In the absence of a theoretical analysis, a thorough and systematic empirical evaluation is of key importance for being able to make sound conclusions about the suitability of the algorithms. The aim of this paper is to survey how application placement algorithms for fog computing are evaluated in the literature. In particular, we identify good and bad practices that should be utilized respectively avoided when evaluating such algorithms.