Edge, Mobile & IoT
General material on architecture beyond the data centre boundary.
3 to work through
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intermediate Multiple choice
What do mobile, IoT and edge architectures have in common that data-centre architectures do not?
2 min answer -
advanced
A VP says the app feels slow in Asia and asks whether the team should move it to the edge. Walk me through how you scope that conversation.
3 min answer -
advanced Multiple choice
A global platform is deciding what to run at the edge, in a regional cloud, and centrally. What determines the placement of each capability?
1 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Edge, Mobile and IoT
Architectures where compute sits on devices or near users — sharing the constraints of intermittent connectivity, limited resources and clients you c…
conceptUnreachable Node
A component you cannot log into, restart or inspect, which removes every operational technique that assumes access to the running system.
Neighbouring topics
Mobile App Architecture
Layering, navigation, background execution, and the platform rules you do not set.
Offline-First
Treating connectivity as an optimisation, with a local store as the source of truth.
Sync & Conflict Resolution
Two devices that both changed the same record while neither could see the other.
CRDTs
Data types that converge without coordination, and the semantics you must accept.
Mobile Release Strategy
Store review, staged rollout, and supporting versions you can never force off.
Push & Background Work
Delivery that is best-effort, and an operating system that will kill your process.
Device Identity
Identifying a thing rather than a person, and rotating a credential you cannot type.
Edge Compute Topologies
Regional, metro, on-premises and on-device, and what each tier is genuinely for.
Edge Functions
Short-lived compute at the CDN, its runtime limits, and what must stay at origin.
Edge Data Consistency
Replicated read state at hundreds of locations, and writes that still go to one.
IoT Ingest Architecture
Millions of small, unreliable, frequently duplicated messages arriving continuously.
Device Provisioning
Getting identity and configuration onto hardware at manufacture or first boot.
Fleet Management
Inventory, health, configuration and grouping across devices you will never see.
OTA Updates
Updating firmware over a flaky link, with rollback, and without bricking the device.
Constrained Protocols
MQTT, CoAP and their kin, chosen for power, packet size and intermittent links.
Device Telemetry at Scale
Deciding what a device sends, how often, and what is aggregated before it leaves.
Digital Twin
A server-side model of a physical thing's reported and desired state.
Edge Security & Attestation
Secure boot, hardware roots of trust, and proving what is running on a device.
Physical-World Failure Modes
Power loss, tampering, clock drift, thermal limits, and a truck through the fibre.