The next frontier for communications networks: power management

Abstract

Storage, memory, processor, and communications bandwidth are all relatively plentiful and inexpensive. However, a growing expense in the operation of computer networks is electricity usage. Estimates place devices connected to the Internet as consuming about 2%, and growing, of the total electricity produced in the USA-much of this power consumption is unnecessary. Power management is needed to reduce this large and growing energy consumption of the Internet. We see power management as the 'next frontier' in research in computer networks. In this paper, we propose methods for reducing energy consumption of networked desktop computers. Using traffic characterization of university dormitory computers, we show that there is significant idle time that can be exploited for power management. However, current Ethernet adapters in desktop computers lack the capabilities needed to allow existing system power management features to be enabled. We address this problem with a proxying Ethernet adapter that handles routine network tasks for a desktop computer when it is in a low-power sleep mode. This proxying adapter can allow existing power management features in desktop computers to remain enabled and have the computer be 'on the network' at all times. The energy that we expect can be saved is in the range of 0.8-2.7 billion US dollars/year. q

Laptop energy-saving opportunities based on user behaviors

“…They apparently had not enabled the power management features after disabling them. Christensen et al (2004) also found that users disabled their power management features to ensure access to their computers at all times.…”

Design and Implementation of Cooperative Network Connectivity Proxy Using Universal Plug and Play

“…His initial work focuses on the NCP design for on-board NIC and LAN scenarios. He also analyzed the network traffic in university dormitory during idle and busy periods to forecast the NCP importance [1]. The NCP design on host's NIC, application specific wake-up, preserving TCP connections and strategies to increase the host's sleep period are addressed in [5].…”

“…Failing to generate/respond heart-beat messages will drop the network connection and results in the application state loss [6]. Thus, much of the energy consumed by the Internet connected edge devices is wasted as these applications don't transmit real data most of the time but just the periodic heart-beat messages [1].…”

“…The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that PCs in US consumes about 2% of the overall US electricity requirement [1]. For a typical household, a single 80W PC that remains powered-up 24/7 will add about 6.5% to the utility bill [2], [3].…”

TCP Window Based DVFS for Low Power Network Controller SoC

“…Energy saving is only achieved when the client is completely shut-down, missing the cases of active idle or low network utilization periods, which comprise a significant part of network activity. Measurements show that the average utilization of desktop Ethernet links is in the range of 1%-5% [5], [6]. Both PBD and TWD provide major energy saving for these low network utilization periods, while maintaining high performance for high utilization bursts/periods.…”