A Hybrid Communication Approach for Metadata Exchange in Geo-Distributed Fog Environments

Metadata exchange is crucial for efficient geo-distributed fog computing. Existing solutions for metadata exchange overlook geo-awareness or lack adequate failure tolerance. We propose HFCS, a novel hybrid communication system that combines hierarchical and peer-to-peer elements, along with edge pools. HFCS utilizes a gossip protocol for dynamic metadata exchange. In simulation, we investigate the impact of node density and edge pool size on HFCS performance. We observe a performance improvement for clustered node distributions, aligning well with real-world scenarios. HFCS outperforms a hierarchical and a P2P approach in task fulfillment at a slight cost to failure detection.