Enabling Intelligent Services at the Network Edge

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The proliferation of novel mobile applications and the associated AI services necessitates a fresh view on the architecture, algorithms and services at the network edge in order to meet stringent performance requirements. Some recent work addressing these challenges is presented. In order to meet the requirement for low-latency, the execution of computing tasks moves form the cloud to the network edge, closer to the end-users. The joint optimization of service placement and request routing in dense mobile edge computing networks is considered. Multidimensional constraints are introduced to capture the storage requirements of the vast amounts of data needed. An algorithm that achieves close-to-optimal performance using a randomized rounding technique is presented. Recent advances in network virtualization and programmability enable realization of services as chains, where flows can be steered through a pre-defined sequence of functions deployed at different network locations. The optimal deployment of such service chains where storage is a stringent constraint in addition to computation and bandwidth is considered and an approximation algorithm with provable performance guarantees is proposed and evaluated. Finally the problem of traffic flow classification as it arises in firewalls and intrusion detection applications is presented. An approach for realizing such functions based on a novel two-stage deep learning method for attack detection is presented. Leveraging the high level of data plane programmability in modern network hardware, the realization of these mechanisms at the network edge is demonstrated.