5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Fog Computing | Limitations & Benefits of Fog Computing

As a result of IoT device evolution there were large amount of data produced. These datas comes with high bandwidth requirements. Due to the fact that cloud computing fails to fulfill these requirements, fog computing was developed. 

However it is not considered to be a replacement to the cloud computing. It was developed overall to overcome all the technical complexities faced by the cloud. Fog computing has the capability to make you access data rapidly and efficiently. In short it helps you to manage, access, analyze and store all the datas. Although it includes many benefits to the IT infrastructure, it comes with numerous drawbacks as well. Especially due to their decentralized structure. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages will help you to decide if it will be useful for your business.

In this article, I will be illustrating the 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Fog Computing | Limitations & Benefits of Fog Computing. Finally from this post, you will know the pros and cons of using fog computing.

Let's get started,

Advantages of Fog Computing

1. Privacy

Fog computing can be used to control the extent of privacy. Any sensitive data of the user can be analyzed locally instead of sending them to a centralized cloud infrastructure. Through this way the team of IT will be able to track and control the respective device. Furthermore if any subset of data needs to be analyzed it can be sent to the cloud.


2. Productivity

If customer needs to make the machine function according to the way they want, they can utilize fog applications. These fog applications can be easily made by the developers with the right set of tools. After the development has taken place it can be deployed whenever they want.


3. Security

Fog computing has the capability to connect multiple devices to the same network. Because of this the operations take place at various end points in a complex distributed environment rather than a centralized location. This makes it easier to identify potential threats before it effects the whole network.


4. Bandwidth

The bandwidth required for transmitting data can be expensive depending upon the resources. Due to the fact that the selected data can be processed locally instead of sending it to the cloud, there are very less number of bandwidth requirements. This bandwidth savings will be specially beneficial when increasing the number of IoT devices.


5. Latency

Another benefit of processing selected data locally is the latency savings. The data can be processed at the nearest data source geographically closer to the user. This can produce instant responses especially for the time sensitive services. 

Disadvantages of Fog Computing

1. Complexity

Due to its complexity, the concept of Fog computing can be difficult to understand. There are many devices located at different locations storing and analyzing their own set of data. This could add more complexity to the network. In addition to that there are more sophisticated fog nodes present in a fog infrastructure.


2. Security

As mentioned earlier there are numerous devices and different fog nodes be present in a fog computing architecture. There are chances for these fog nodes to be in a less secure environment. Hackers can easily impose fake IP address in them gaining access to the respective fog node. Or else they increase the risk of corrupted files infiltrating the main data stream infecting both the device and the company. This makes them vulnerable to Man-in-the-middle attacks. 


3. Authentication

Service offered by a fog computing is of large scale. The fog computing is comprised of end users, internet service providers and cloud providers. This can often rise trust and authentication issues in the fog.


4. Maintenance

Unlike cloud architecture, where maintenance is made seamless, it is not so in fog. Since controllers and storages are distributed across various locations in the network it needs more maintenance. The fog architecture is decentralized for processing. 


5. Power Consumption

The number of fog nodes present in a fog environment is directly proportional to the energy consumption of them. Which means that these fog nodes require high amount of energy for them to function. As there are more fog nodes in a fog infrastructure there are more power consumption as well. Most companies often try to lower their cost using these fog nodes.