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Optical fiber deployments in metropolitan areas are critical for information distribution to businesses and large segments of the population. In this paper, we describe a char- acterization study of metropolitan area fiber networks in the US. The goal of our work is to elucidate the key aspects of these infrastructures and to assess how they can be enhanced to support growth in cloud-mobile via expanded connectivity to data centers. We collect maps of 204 metro fiber networks and transcribe these into a geographic information system for analysis and visualization. We report on characteristics including raw miles, geography, proximity to users, correspondence to other infrastructure and PoP/data center proximity. These characteris- tics indicate highly diverse deployments in different metro areas and suggest different strategies for future deployments. Next, we conduct a resource allocation analysis to assess how fiber infrastructure can be deployed in metro areas to reduce the physical distance to data centers over a range of cost scenarios. Our results show that a small number of new connections to data centers can significantly reduce physical distances to users.
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Deployment Characteristics of "The Edge" in Mobile Edge Computing
The envisioned capabilities of mobile edge computing are predicated on a delivery infrastructure with capacity, ubiquity, robustness, and capabilities to serve a country-wide user base. In this paper, we present an empirical study of key aspects of mobile edge infrastructure toward the goal of understanding their current characteristics and identifying future deployments. We start by analyzing a dataset of over 4M cell tower locations in the US. We evaluate the geographic characteristics of deployments and highlight how locations correspond to population density in major metropolitan areas and in rural areas. We also show how deployments have been arranged along highways throughout the US. Our analysis highlight areas where new deployments would be warranted. Finally, we analyze how cell tower deployments correspond to current major data center locations and assess how micro servers might be deployed to improve response times and to better serve customers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1703592
- PAR ID:
- 10096147
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Mobile Edge Communications
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3229556.3229557
