Dear Colleagues,

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way applications and services are designed, developed and run, providing affordable access to computing and storage resources to the masses. Technologies supporting cloud computing are progressing from virtual machines to containers and to serverless computing. Today, the migration of applications to cloud datacenters (DCs), combined with the hyperscale size of DCs and their world-wide placement, has led to the proliferation of DC-oriented traffic. This traffic is served by inter-datacenter and intra-datacenter networking infrastructures. Several networking technologies and advances are required to support the volume and the dynamicity of the cloud DC-related traffic.

At the same time, a number of emerging applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Cities, autonomous vehicles (drones and cars), VR/AR, CCTV cameras and others, enabled by networking advances like 5G networks, constantly create huge amounts of data, posing high and hard requirements on the centralized cloud infrastructures, requiring low-latency and real-time processing. This pushes the computing and storage resources out of their centralized locations and close to the end user and device. This is materialized today in the form of edge and fog computing, where processing takes place on the devices or near the devices. The latter include mini-DCs deployed near highways, in buildings or in the central office of network operators, also serving 5G processing requirements. These resources (e.g., fog nodes) can also aggregate or pre-process data, pushing to the centralized cloud only the information required for further higher level analysis.

It is expected that in the future the number of devices and data inputs will scale from thousands to millions to billions, reaching Exascale dimensions, while the sensors and cameras onboard the various devices will increase in number and capabilities (e.g., resolution), further skyrocketing the volume of data produced. The challenges ahead cannot be handled by a single technology or a single domain (intra-datacenter, inter-datacenter, centralized cloud, distributed cloud/fog). Instead, synergies are required in the technologies, tools, techniques to be developed considering end-to-end operation and tackling issues related to resource deployment and orchestration, networking, security, application management and advanced analytics.

This Special Issue invites original research papers on new algorithms, protocols, architectures, technologies and solutions for future-generation cloud computing and cloud networking in the cloud and the edge/fog. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

- Optical Networks in Cloud Datacenter Networks

- Software Defined Networking in Cloud Datacenter Networks (including P4, protocols, etc.)

- Cloud and Edge/Fog Network Management

- Cloud, Edge, Fog Resource Orchestration

- Middleware and Middleboxes

- 5G and Edge and Fog Computing (Multi-Access Edge Computing)

- Big Data Management in the Edge/Fog and the Cloud

- Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics in the Edge/Fog and the Cloud

- Serverless Computing in the Edge

- Basic Algorithmic Challenges (e.g., network slicing, resource allocation, prediction)

- Security, Privacy, and Confidentiality in the Cloud, Edge/Fog (e.g., blockchain)

- Peer-to-Peer Schemes in Edge/Fog

- End-To-End Architectures and Solutions

- Traffic Characterization and Engineering

- Disaster Recovery and Reliability

- Storage and Caching in the Edge/Fog and the Cloud

- Edge/Fog Computing and Storage Resources (generic resources, FPGA, GPUs)

- Standardization, Modelling and Interfaces

- Applications Utilizing Edge/Fog and Cloud Computing Technologies

- Business and Market Developments

Dr. Panagiotis Kokkinos
Prof. Dr. Dimosthenis Kyriazis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Internet is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Cloud, Edge
• Fog
• Networking
• Technologies
• Protocols
• Algorithms