What Is Edge Computing?
Edge computing processes data closer to users — at CDN edge locations, IoT devices, or regional data centers — rather than in a central cloud. It reduces latency, improves performance, and enables real-time processing for applications that can't tolerate round trips to distant servers.
How Edge Computing Works
Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions, and Deno Deploy run your code at edge locations worldwide. Instead of processing a request in us-east-1 for a user in Tokyo, the edge function runs in Tokyo — cutting latency from 200ms to 20ms.
Key Concepts
- Edge Function — Serverless functions that run at CDN edge locations — Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions
- Latency Reduction — Processing data close to users eliminates network round trips to distant data centers
- Edge Cache — Storing computation results at edge locations for even faster subsequent responses
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I use edge computing?
For latency-sensitive operations: personalization, A/B testing, authentication, image transformation, and geolocation-based routing. If your function needs a database in a single region, the edge benefit may be negated by the database round trip.
What's the difference between edge and serverless?
Serverless runs in one or few regions. Edge computing runs in dozens of locations worldwide. Edge functions are serverless functions deployed to the edge network.