Six Things I Learned about Edge Computing in Five Years at Azion

06/06/2023

Six Things I Learned about Edge Computing in Five Years at Azion

By Rogerio Mariano, Interconnection, Edge & Submarine Cable | Global Head Azion

I looked around and realized that it’s been five years since I became Director of Network Planning at an edge computing startup with the mission to promote the hyperconnected economy by facilitating the construction and operation of modern applications around the world.

This company is Azion. From the start, my story with Azion has been marked by learning —something I continue to do daily—, vision, planning and progress, building POPs and reshaping interconnection. I am extremely fortunate to be surrounded by a team of exceptional people of the highest level within the company. At Azion, we learn that we have a real opportunity to help shape the future of edge infrastructure and play a modest but significant role in enabling applications that are, in fact, national technological sovereignty. In the last 25 years, I experienced the transition from ATM, Token-Ring and FDDI to Ethernet (shoutout to anyone who has operated a Cisco WS-C8510 or a General DataComm!); I witnessed the birth of the MPLS Forum; I loved working on the design, implementation, and operation of inner-core and outer-core backbones; I read books by Sam Halabi; I saw companies such as Nortel and Bay Networks disappear; I witnessed the evolution of photonic and submarine networks (have you ever heard of SDM?), and the Cloud market mature. But believe me, the move to the Edge is one of the most relevant transitions I have seen in the technology sector in recent times.

As 2023 unfolds, I would like to share six takeaways from my nearly five years at Azion, a personal perspective ranging from the evolution of edge computing applications to their impact on the underlying digital infrastructure.

Takeaway #1: The Edge created a new interconnection model.

In recent years, we have seen a shift from traditional interconnection models to models that cater more to services and applications at the Edge. Generally speaking, the global market has become accustomed to four interconnection models:

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  1. ON-NET (servers in an “eyeball”, usually broadband service network).
  2. Private Network Interconnect (PNI) connections, i.e., direct connections between private networks.
  3. Internet Exchange Points (IXPs).
  4. IP Transit, which is a service in which an Internet Service Provider (ISP) allows traffic to flow through the network to its final destination.

However, with the arrival of the Edge (and edge computing), access to the end user, and consequently more and more content, arrives on ON-NET and via PNIs to the detriment of connections through IXPs. While IXP traffic will grow more slowly than the overall Internet, IXPs will remain an important part of the ecosystem for the following:

  1. Long-tail connections (for example, an ISP in the interior of Mato Grosso which connects to the traffic matrix of an IXP in São Paulo).
  2. Low traffic volumes.

An important aspect to note is that we are currently witnessing this shift in the interconnection process and that the majority of “Cloud to Cloud” and “Cloud to Edge” traffic is through private networks, not through the public Internet. This generates a new interconnection structure and architecture, where we have:

Content owner -> Cloud on-ramp -> Cloud-Edge -> PNI -> Edge -> PNI -> ON-NET

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LACNIC.

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