# Recent Advances in Evolving Computing Paradigms: Cloud, Edge, and Fog Technologies
## 3 Evolving Computing Paradigms and Related Concepts
### Fog Computing
#### 3.12.1 Essential Features  
The significant trait of fog computing is that the computation, communication, and storage tasks are accomplished close to end-users by capitalizing on the key attribute of fog's proximity to the edge. The additional characteristics of fog computing [106; 15] are outlined as follows:  
* Low latency: The proximity of fog nodes to end devices that generate data, such as sensors and actuators, entails a significantly faster reaction and analysis than from  
Figure 7: Fog computing and its related computing paradigms. the centralized cloud data center. This feature considerably minimizes the data transfer across the internet and enables a low latency to manage real-time applications, notably sensitive to latency and time. * Save bandwidth: As the fog model allows data computation and storage between conventional cloud and end nodes, less complex pre-processing tasks are handled locally. It dramatically minimizes data transfer across the internet, with endpoints offering fast and premium localized computer and storage services. Transferring only appropriate data to the cloud substantially reduces the network transmission and bandwidth usage, befitting the big data era. * Multi-tenancy: On account of the vastly virtualized and distributed infrastructure, multi-tenancy in a constrained environment is possible. * Support for mobility: Due to the direct interaction between fog applications and mobile devices, more control over mobile devices is maintained. Thus, the fog model facilitates better control of users along with mobile devices to administrators and satisfies mobility demands that are location-based and the way information is accessed, resulting in enhanced system performance and service quality. * Interaction in real-time: Contrary to the cloud, fog applications deliver services in real-time because of their low-latency feature. * Context-awareness: the nodes and end devices in the fog setting are aware of the contextual location. * Geographically wide distribution: The fog model's decentralized architecture facilitates geographically distributed deployment with a large number of widely dispersed nodes. It imparts closer data analysis, rapid big data processing, improved decision-making potential in real-time and location-based services to consumers. * Wireless access networking: Though fog is deployed in wired environments, it is also suitable for IoT wireless networks. * Support for heterogeneity: The fog infrastructure encompasses high-speed lines to the data center and wireless access methods to the edge devices. Fog nodes are available physically or virtually, and service interfaces are incredibly dynamic, operating in wired and wireless settings coming from different hardware and software vendors and heterogeneous to cater to the low latency demand of globally distributed applications. * Seamless interoperability and federation: Owing to its heterogeneous nature, fog nodes and devices originate from various vendors and are generally deployed in diverse settings. For the effective interaction of devices from different providers, fog computing must enable interoperability with federated services across domains. Thus, to allow interoperability and cooperation across diverse resources and devices, fog computing employs policies for resource management. * Real-time analytics: With data collected and processed close to the sources, real-time analytics is possible. * Scalability: Fog computing exhibits scalability and adaptability to varying conditions with the data load, resource pooling, network demands, and flexible computing. * Support for industrial applications: As computing and analyses are conducted in real-time, industrial applications widely benefit. * Security and privacy: Fog computing brings facilities nearer to end consumers while ensuring privacy and security of sensitive and private data using integrity checking, access control, and encryption methods by fog nodes.