EdgeShield: Enabling Collaborative DDoS Mitigation at the Edge

Xiaoyu Xia, Feifei Chen, Qiang He, Ruikun Luo, Bowen Liu, Caslon Chua, Rajkumar Buyya, Yun Yang

Abstract: Edge computing (EC) enables low-latency services by pushing computing resources to the network edge. Due to the geographic distribution and limited capacities of edge servers, EC systems face the challenge of edge distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Existing systems designed to fight cloud DDoS attacks cannot mitigate edge DDoS attacks effectively due to new attack characteristics. In addition, those systems are typically activated upon detected attacks, which is not always realistic in EC systems. DDoS mitigation needs to be cohesively integrated with workload migration at the edge to ensure timely responses to edge DDoS attacks. In this paper, we present EdgeShield, a novel DDoS mitigation system that leverages edge servers’ computing resources collectively to defend against edge DDoS attacks without the need for attack detection. Aiming to maximize system throughput over time without causing significant service delays, EdgeShield monitors service delays and migrates workloads across an EC system with adaptive mitigation strategies. The experimental results show that EdgeShield significantly outperforms state-of-the-art solutions in both system throughput and service delays.