Both edge and fog computing provide similar functionalities where smart devices or items or sensors push data and analytics to cloud platforms.
“Fog computing and edge computing are effectively the same thing."
Both are concerned with leveraging the computing capabilities within a smaller simpler server / gateway or sensor hardware device and process and share data via a localized network to carry out computation tasks that would ordinarily have been carried out in the cloud. More advanced AI and data processing still are done on the cloud.
Both technologies can help organizations reduce their reliance on cloud-based platforms to analyze data, provide intelligent automation and analysis.
The main difference between edge computing and fog computing comes down to where the processing of that data takes place.
Edge computing usually occurs directly on the devices to which the sensors are attached or a gateway device that is physically “close” to the sensors.
Fog computing moves the edge computing activities to processors that are connected to the LAN or into the LAN hardware itself so they may be physically more distant from the sensors and actuators. Think NB-IoT or LoRa or mesh networks and those types of IoT technologies.
