Leveraging Low-Power Devices for Cloud Services in Community Networks

Community networks are IP networks constantly being improved that evolve into large-scale computing platforms. This has resulted from the effort to adapt the cloud computing model towards services that can operate and utilize the resources inside the community network. The network and its infrastructure are contributed by individuals, companies, organizations and are maintained by the community itself. Community cloud devices are often low computing resource devices, such as home gateways, with limited capabilities. Currently, these devices are configured to run community services only. This has become a drawback for further adoption because of contributor´s difficulty to also use the donated cloud device for private purposes. We apply container-based virtualization for the problem of resource sharing in low-capacity devices in order to create a multi-purpose execution environment in a single device. Thus, a single device can be configured to deliver to the user and the community a multi-purpose environment, such as personal and public, isolated from one another, while preserving the community cloud services. Our comparative analysis with the current infrastructure in community networks gives evidence that the capability of the devices to run concurrent services is maintained.