With the rapid growth of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the increasingly conspicuous limitations of the Cloud, the Fog has emerged to be a promising research topic that is breeding another transformation in computing. Pear is a start-up implementing fog computing technology from concept into reality. Conforming to the “XaaS” philosophy, incorporating the crowdsourcing paradigm, and agglomerating the Sharing Economy, Pear is able to scale up a network with a pool of resources, provide reliable services and make a subset of fog touch the ground.

In this thesis, we provide a retrospective view of development in related fields over the past two decades, with highlights on the lessons learned. We abstract them to metaphors and analogies that indicate and inspire ou...[ Read more ]

With the rapid growth of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the increasingly conspicuous limitations of the Cloud, the Fog has emerged to be a promising research topic that is breeding another transformation in computing. Pear is a start-up implementing fog computing technology from concept into reality. Conforming to the “XaaS” philosophy, incorporating the crowdsourcing paradigm, and agglomerating the Sharing Economy, Pear is able to scale up a network with a pool of resources, provide reliable services and make a subset of fog touch the ground.

In this thesis, we provide a retrospective view of development in related fields over the past two decades, with highlights on the lessons learned. We abstract them to metaphors and analogies that indicate and inspire our philosophy, choices and decisions. We generalise the working fashion to a unified model, and we give solutions to key problems. We also introduce several of Pear’s on-going business projects from both technological and business perspectives. Algorithmic, protocolic and architectural design principles are also discussed, along with a business plan.