  Mobile edge computing (MEC) is proposed to boost high-efficient and
time-sensitive 5G applications. However, the "microburst" may occur even in
lightly-loaded scenarios, which leads to the indeterministic service latency
(i.e., unpredictable delay or delay variation), hence hindering the deployment
of MEC. Deterministic IP networking (DIP) has been proposed that can provide
bounds on latency, and high reliability in the large-scale networks.
Nevertheless, the direct migration of DIP into the MEC network is non-trivial
owing to its original design for the Ethernet with homogeneous devices.
Meanwhile, DIP also faces the challenges on the network throughput and
scheduling flexibility. In this paper, we delve into the adoption of DIP for
the MEC networks and some of the relevant aspects. A deterministic MEC (D-MEC)
network is proposed to deliver the deterministic service (i.e., providing the
MEC service with bounded service latency). In the D-MEC network, two
mechanisms, including the cycle mapping and cycle shifting, are designed to
enable: (i) seamless and deterministic transmission with heterogeneous
underlaid resources; and (ii) traffic shaping on the edges to improve the
resource utilization. We also formulate a joint configuration to maximize the
network throughput with deterministic QoS guarantees. Extensive simulations
verify that the proposed D-MEC network can achieve a deterministic MEC service,
even in the highly-loaded scenarios.
