SpeciServe. a gRPC Infrastructure Concept

• Main Authors: Carthen, Chase, Zaremehrjardi, Araam, Estreito, Zachary, Tavakkoli, Alireza, Harris, Frederick C., Dascalu, Sergiu M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Benchmark testing; big data; data pipeline; data streaming; data transfer; edge computing; gRPC; loT; Machine learning; Pipelines; Protocols; Smart cities; smart city; Standardization; Switches
• ISSN: 2770-8209
• DOI: 10.1109/SERA61261.2024.10685565

Smart city projects require data to be transferred from one destination to the next using a number of different network protocols. The data pipelines involved in these smart city projects often have limited bandwidth or compute resources due to the low power nature of most embedded hardware. The data transferred between devices in these types of embedded systems are often structured in non-standard data schemata. Remote procedure calls (RPC) are implemented to transfer data between devices and switching between RPC implementations can be tricky due to the lack of standardization. There is no guarantee that an existing data schema will work with a different RPC implementation. This makes it difficult for a researcher or system developer to benchmark and compare different RPC im-plementations. In this paper, a conceptual infrastructure named SpeciServe is introduced where gRPC is used as a communication backbone due its support for flatbuffers and multiple server modes. Multiple software services are described to allow for dissimilar RPC implementations to be run in parallel. This system is intended to allow for researchers in machine learning, smart cities, and Internet of Things (loT) to be able test different versions of RPCs and provide support for system developers to define the functions of an edge service.