Transparent Access to 5G Edge Computing Services

The  upcoming  5G  telecommunication  system  is  ex-pected  to  provide  high  data  rates  and  ultra-low  latency  to  meetthe challenging demands of future applications.Multi-access EdgeComputing (MEC)is a central piece of the solution by providinga  cloud  computing  platform  at  the  edge  of  the  radio  accessnetwork. In this paper, we argue that edge computing should beinvisible to clients and should not require modifications in clientapplications.  A  prototype  shows  how  requests  to  cloud  servicescan be transparently redirected to the closest edge computing hostby  leveraging  Software-Defined  Networking,  while  still  allowingto  use  the  cloud  as  a  fallback.  In  addition,  we  discuss  how  toscale  our  approach  for  large  networks.