You develop Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) applications because you want the lowest latency and highest throughput between your client devices and your Edge services. There's more to it, though, than just deploying some of your application services to Edge locations and hoping devices connect to the right ones. The Edge location that is geographically closest to a client device may not be the optimal endpoint for a variety of reasons.

The Verizon Edge Discovery Service API can direct your application clients to connect to the optimal service endpoints of your Edge applications for every session. The Edge Discovery Service takes into account the current location of a device, its IP anchor location, current network traffic, and other factors to determine which 5G Edge platform a device should connect to.

• Find the optimal 5G Edge platforms for deploying your applications, based on region, resource requirements, user devices, number of subscribers per square kilometer, or a combination of those.
• Register the endpoints of your deployed services with specific 5G Edge platforms.
• Find the optimal service endpoint for a client to connect to based on the client device and/or region.

For a description of all Edge Discovery Service API requests and responses, 

see the API Reference pages.

5G Edge = Verizon + your cloud service provider

Mobile Edge Computing is a collaboration between Verizon and cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services. The cloud service provides the compute and storage services on which Edge Applications run, and Verizon provides the network and connectivity for mobile devices to access those applications. Because the compute and storage hardware is installed at specific locales within the Verizon network, data can move to and from mobile devices in those areas with very low latency and high throughput, since data doesn't have to travel through multiple "hops" to a remote cloud data center and then back to the mobile device. That's the core concept of Mobile Edge Computing.

Use the Edge Discovery Service to find the best locations to deploy your application

If your Edge application is only going to be available in a single, well-defined area and will only be used by devices from that area, you can just deploy to that area through your cloud service provider. If your application will be offered over a larger area and/or be used by devices from many areas, the Edge Discovery Service can help you find the best locations for deployment, which could save you the cost of deploying your application to areas where it won't be well-utilized.

You can use the Edge Discovery Service to find the optimal 5G Edge platforms for deploying your applications, based on region, resource requirements such as latency, specific user devices, the minimum number of subscribers per square kilometer, or a combination of those.

Deploy your Edge services through your Cloud Service Provider

An Edge Application is a cloud application in which at least some of the services have been moved to the network edge, typically those services that require low latency and high throughput when interacting with mobile devices. Other services can remain in the remote or centralized cloud and interact with the edge services as needed. Because Edge applications run on compute and storage hardware managed by a cloud service provider, you deploy all of the application's services through your cloud service provider, not through the Verizon network.

Tell Verizon where to find your deployed services

Your cloud service provider doesn't automatically tell Verizon anything about your Edge application, such as what kind of service it provides or where it has been deployed. To determine the best connections for mobile clients, the Edge Discovery Service needs to know the routable endpoints of your deployed edge services, for all edge locations. For example, if you deploy a service to multiple AWS Wavelength zones, you'll need to note the IP address given to the service in each zone and register those values with the Edge Discovery Service through the API.

Once the Edge Discovery Service knows where all of the endpoints are for your Edge service, it can identify which endpoint a client should connect to for the best service for each session.