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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

This kind of load distribution is important but please, let’s not redefine the term “edge”. TCP/IP was specifically designed with the devices at the edge to function as peers. Computing on the edge means, say, doing the computing in your phone or laptop or iot frob.

This is longstanding use and to pollute a useful technical term just leads to unnecessary confusion.

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I think that ship has sailed. “Edge computing” is a well established phrase at this point. When I need to refer to the scenario you’re describing I usually say “local computation”.

If that's were the case, why would the entire first page of Google search results for "edge computing" refer to IOT, and processing data where it's created?

You’re right of course, IoT is edge computing because it’s treated as company’s edge, while we can’t say the same for end users’ phones and computers.

But that's only because there aren't any compelling IOT applications in the consumer space. Companies are the users with distributed assets, not consumers.

Just wait until we're running transformers on the edge, using DSL and stacks.

Apple does a lot of that kind of thing on phone/tablet.

By “a lot” I mean they have a lot of devices dining so frequently; I imagine the workload is very carefully managed for battery/heat reasons.

My point was more that "transformers", "DSL", and "stacks" all have long established meanings that have been bastardized by unimaginative software companies.

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