SEE: a service execution environment for edge services

The increasing mismatch between the low-bandwidth, resource characteristics of wireless mobile devices and the high-bandwidth expectations of many content-rich services drives the demand for deploying content-oriented services along the data path between the end users and the content servers. We argue that the idea of extending existing caching proxies to support these services is promising. This suggests extending the proxy caches for more than just their original intended purpose, that is the creation of an execution environment within them, which allows the execution of services locally and remotely. We describe the design, implementation and evaluation of a service execution environment (SEE) in the context of the CONCA proxy cache. We also compare the performance of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP) by using them as call-out protocols between SEE and the service providers.