Greening the Internet; Power Optimization

In this seminar, we shall discuss the need and techniques for power optimization of networking devices and protocols. We identify specific points in the networking world where considerable power wastage occurs and discuss them in detail. We discuss cost of various copy operations required to run TCP protocol and the energy expended in transmitting data using wireless communication. We identify the need to employ utilization based link speed variations in Ethernet. Various Internet protocols such as the OSPF protocol can be made energy efficient through appropriate modifications to allow devices to sleep when on low load. We discuss techniques to reduce the power consumption of over-provisioned servers. We understand that modifications to end systems are easier than modifications to networking protocols. Energy efficient protocols will be slowly phased in through initiatives from both the standards bodies and the manufacturers of networking equipment.