MEC

MEC is a network architecture that brings cloud capabilities to the edge of the network. It was formerly known as mobile edge computing. It is where mobile networks and the internet meet and hand off network traffic.

What started out as a concept is now also a standards framework developed by ETSI. They decided to expand the aperture by replacing “mobile” with “multi-access” because it was no longer just about mobile phones but had to do with the plethora of connected devices. MEC is about making edge devices, including IoT-type devices, smarter by running applications on them and making sense of the data that they generate.

This is where many of the previously described concepts converge. Figure 4.5 shows MEC positioned within a large edge architecture. As with everything else in the realm of edge computing, MEC is meant to reduce latency and ensure a highly efficient network service delivery in remote places. MEC-related tasks are meant to be...