Software Networks, 2nd Edition

7Skin Networking

Skin networking is the new paradigm that is the least developed. This represents the Cloud level that is the closest to the user since it is defined as reachable with Wi-Fi or femtocell. The skin datacenter directly holds the users’ connection antenna. Skin networking is not a standardized name, and we can come across names such as mist networking as well. These femto-datacenters can also fit in a pocket and, in the future, be mobile. Of course, its power is reduced due to its size and mobility. This very small datacenter can work with a battery. However, we can place many virtual machines. An example of skin datacenter would be a smartphone with very large memory and many multi-core processors. This kind of mobile datacenter will only emerge in 2025. First, the skin datacenter is a very powerful hardware environment with reduced size. This datacenter must be able to receive all virtual machines necessary for the functioning of a home, a small company or a department of a big company.

7.1. Skin networking architecture

Femto-datacenters are located very close to clients, i.e. in the access points or in boxes situated in the user’s area. The immediate advantage of femto-datacenters is the extremely short response time to run a control algorithm, and therefore the ability to carry out operations in real time. However, this requires devices with significant amounts of resources. Given the reduction in the price of hardware, this solution could be preferred to ...