EdgeNet: A Multi-Tenant and Multi-Provider Edge Cloud

EdgeNet is a public Kubernetes cluster dedicated to network and distributed systems research, supporting experiments that are deployed concurrently by independent groups. Its nodes are hosted by multiple institutions around the world. It represents a departure from the classic Kubernetes model, where the nodes that are available to a single tenant reside in a small number of well-interconnected data centers. The free open-source EdgeNet code extends Kubernetes to the edge, making three key contributions: multi-tenancy, geographical deployments, and single-command node installation. We show that establishing a public Kubernetes cluster over the internet, with multiple tenants and multiple hosting providers is viable. Preliminary results also indicate that the EdgeNet testbed that we run provides a satisfactory environment to run a variety of experiments with minimal network overhead.