rastructure manager Other MEC host MEC host Figure 6.4.1 Standalone variant of the ETSI MEC reference architecture (Source: Reproduced with permission from © ETSI). A MEC host, which provides storage, network, and other resources to a MEC platform. A MEC platform, which provides the environment where MEC applications can run. MEC applications, developed either by a MEC vendor or a third party, which provide some useful services. There is an expectation that a market for MEC application will emerge, where multiple vendors will provide multiple MEC applications optimized to run in the edge. It remains to be seen whether the concept becomes popular. Each MEC host is composed of virtualization infrastructure, a MEC platform, and a num- ber of MEC applications. The virtualization infrastructure includes a data plane, which is in charge of traffic routing to MEC applications, based on configuration provided by the MEC platform at the control plane via the Mp2 reference point. The MEC platform also includes a number of MEC services, accessible to MEC applications through APIs via the Mp1 refer- ence point. A MEC application itself can produce a service that could be exposed through Mp1 to other applications (via the Service Registry in the MEC platform), which is expected to help creating a MEC applications market. Mechanisms defined in MEC enable third par- ties to build their services (e.g. by exploiting location- and context-aware data available at the edge) and expose them to application developers, who could in turn use them to build new innovative services for end users. As an important note, the MEC architecture standard (even in its "standalone" variant) has been conceived with NFV principles and definitions in mind. In order to enable a smooth MEC-NFV alignment, the following principles have been followed: MEC uses a virtualization platform for running applications at the network edge. 6.4 Multi-Access Edge Computing The NFV infrastructure utilized by MEC may be dedicated to MEC or shared with other NFs or appl