Introduction
Imagine you are in a situation where you need to observe the quick responses of an application/device, and you are using an IoT device. Since majorly IoT devices use the concept of cloud computing to process information. But lets us understand the cloud computing concept, where the data to be processed needs to be transferred to the cloud, and then it will be processed and provide the results/outcome. Will this give the result much faster? The answer will be No. Why? Because more methods exist to get the results much quicker. This necessity to avoid the problems faced by the IoT devices in their computation process results in the development of “Fog Computing.”
Fog Computing

Fog computing architecture
Fog Computing is a concept of Decentralized computing infrastructure coined by Cisco in order to improve the concept of cloud computing. It can be a compliment or an alternative to cloud computing. Fog Computing or Fogging is the idea to extend the cloud services nearer to the IoT devices. From the above architecture, we can say that the Fog acts as a mediator between the Cloud and the IoT devices.
→ The data that is generated by the IoT devices need to be processed.
→ If the data is time-sensitive, the data will be sent to the Fog layer and computed.
→ If the data is not time-sensitive, then data will be sent to the cloud layer and get computed.
We said that Fog Computing is a Decentralized computing infrastructure. Here Decentralized means that the computing resources are not centralized, i.e., not fixed. The computing resources in fog computing will move and be set nearer to the IoT devices that generate data. Thus this concept will reduce the network bandwidth usage and reduce Latency. This will result in faster computation. Many big enterprises are currently utilizing the concept of fog computing to faster the computation.
Fog Nodes
- Another important thing to be noticed is “ Fog Node “.
- Fog Nodes are the virtual instances that are present in the Fog layer, used to supplement the process of cloud computing. A group of computing resources related to a particular sector acts as one Fog Node, etc. A mini storage unit acts like a Fog Node.
- The fog layer is actually connected to a big cloud (private or public cloud) from which the Fog Nodes will fetch and push the data to it.
- The Fog Nodes are used to provide a Transient storage capability. If the data is not transient, then it is moved to the cloud for storage.
- Fog Nodes will quickly decide whether to compute the data or send the data to the Cloud for computation.
- Each fog node has its aggregate fog node. And they can be deployable over the network. Example: routers, switches, etc.