Is Living on the Edge the Future of the Internet?

Edge and fog computing have enhanced traditional client-server computing. However, the emergence of Smart Cities is rapidly changing this outlook because they must provide essential services, including ubiquitous communications, intelligent transport systems, advanced medical platforms, and urban infrastructure management. This demands a secure and resilient low-latency, high-bandwidth environment to provide a sustainable Quality of Service to applications and services. To meet this challenge, a new computing and networking ecosystem must be developed in which servers are managed and run from the edge of the Internet rather than from the centre as they currently are. This ecosystem is called the Intelligent Edge Environment (IEE) and is seen as the next major evolutionary step for the Internet. This journal article explores the development of this new paradigm. Firstly, the Reference Model for the IEE is detailed. Then, new mechanisms needed to build an Implementation Model of the IEE are discussed. The paper then examines the design of a new Internet to meet the challenges of developing Smart Cities.