Simulation Of Energy-Aware Backbone Networks

An optimization of the energy consumption in network systems has been recently an important research issue. The main challenge is to design, develop and test novel technologies, integrated control strategies and mechanisms for network equipment enabling energy saving by adapting network capacities and resources to current traffic loads and user requirements, while ensuring end-toend Quality of Service. In general, the idea is to develop low power devices or nano-processors, concentrate network traffic on a minimal subset of network components, and modulate network devices using dynamic voltage and frequency scaling methods. Various power adapting technologies for network devices are described in literature. We developed a framework for a backbone network management which leads to the minimization of the energy consumption by this network. The concept is based on activity control of the network equipment. The framework is presented in (Niewiadomska-Szynkiewicz et al., 2012b). In this paper we describe the design, performance and potential applications of the software environment for energy efficient backbone network optimization and simulation. This system was used to illustrate the performance of our control framework for energy-aware IP networks.