Towards an internet-scale overlay network for latency-aware decentralized workflows at the edge

Small-scale data centers at the edge are becoming prominent in offering various services to the end-users following the cloud model while avoiding the high latency inherent to the classic cloud environments when accessed from remote Internet regions. However, we should address several challenges to facilitate the end-users finding and consuming the relevant services from the edge at the Internet scale. First, the scale and diversity of the edge hinder seamless access. Second, a framework where researchers openly share their services and data in a secured manner among themselves and with external consumers over the Internet does not exist. Third, the lack of a unified interface and trust across the service providers hinder their interchangeability in composing workflows by chaining the services. Thus, creating a workflow from the services deployed on the various edge nodes is presently impractical. This paper designs Viseu, a latency-aware blockchain framework to provide Virtual Internet Services at the Edge. Viseu aims to solve the puzzle of network service discovery at the edge, considering the peers’ reputation and latency when choosing the service instances. Viseu enables peers to share their computational resources, services, and data among each other in an untrusted environment, rather than relying on a set of trusted service providers. By composing workflows from the peers’ services, rather than confining them to the pre-established service provider and consumer roles, Viseu aims to facilitate scientific collaboration across the peers natively. Furthermore, by offering services from multiple peers close to the end-users, Viseu also minimizes end-to-end latency and data loss in the service execution at the Internet scale.