Secure authentication and load balancing of distributed edge datacenters

Edge computing is an emerging research area to incorporate cloud computing into edge network devices. An Edge datacenter, also referred to as EDC, processes data streams and user requests in real-time and is therefore used to decrease the latency and congestion in the network. EDC is usually setup as a distributed system and is accordingly placed between the cloud datacenter and the data source. These EDCs work as an intermediate layer in the fog hierarchy between IoT and Cloud datacenter. EDC’s are aided by load balancers, responsible for distributing the workload amongst multiple EDC, in order to optimize resource utilization and response time. The load balancers make sure that the workload is equally divided amongst the available EDCs to avoid over loading of some EDCs while other remain idle as this directly impacts the user response and real-time event detection. Given the fact that EDCs are deployed in remote environments, the need for secure authentication is of major importance. In this paper we propose a novel load balancing technique that enables EDC authentication as well as identification of idle EDCs for better load balancing. The proposed load balancing technique is also compared with existing approaches and proves to be more efficient in locating EDC’s with less workload. In addition to the improved efficiency, the proposed scheme also strengthens the security of the network by incorporating destination EDC authentication.