Transport Bottlenecks of Edge Computing in 5G Networks

We consider bottlenecks of TCP throughput in scenarios with edge clouds and 5G cellular networks. By numerical examples from measurements in real networks, we show that edge clouds indeed improve throughput but that several, non-negligible bottlenecks remain. We therefore devise a concept where edge clouds connected directly to the radio access network can increase their transmission rates by relying on built in re-transmissions (through quality of service features) and on the built in user fairness (through per-user buffers and scheduler policies). We then return to the numerical examples and show that our solution provides substantial gains and we conclude by identifying and discussing the remaining bottlenecks and the potential of an improved protocol.