An architecture for client virtualization: A case study

As edge clouds become more widespread, it is important to study their impact on traditional application architectures, most importantly the separation of the data and control planes of traditional clients. We explore such impact using the virtualization of a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) client as a case study. In this model, an end user accesses and controls the virtual P2P client application using a web browser and all P2P application-related control messages originate and terminate from the virtual P2P client deployed inside the remote server. The web browser running on the user device only manages download and upload of the P2P data packets. BitTorrent, as it is the most widely deployed P2P platform, is used to validate the feasibility and study the performance of our approach. We introduce a prototype that has been deployed in public cloud infrastructures. We present simulation results which show clear improvements in the use of user resources. Based on this experience we derive lessons on the challenges and benefits from such edge cloud-based deployments.