Energy Efficient networking

Day - Time: 28 June 2013, h.14:00
Place: Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa - Room: C-29
Speakers
  • Franco Davoli (DITEN-University of Genoa and CNIT - University of Genoa Research Unit - Coordinator of the Master Program in Multimedia Signal Processing and Telecommunication Networks)
Referent

Erina Ferro

Abstract

Great attention to energy efficiency is being dedicated in all Information and Communication Technology (lCT) sectors. In particular, besides data centers and mobile networks, where the concept already got a firm stand, fixed networks start to be structured and operated with energy saving goals in mind. Network operators and Internet Service Providers (lSPs) are motivated by the need to reduce both C02 emissions and operational costs (OPEX) in terms of energy. Among other initiatives, the ECONET project, a 3-year large-scale Integrating Project (IP) funded by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Program, is investigating, developing and testing new capabilities for the Future Internet devices that can enable the efficient management of power consumption, so to strongly reduce the current network energy waste. By considering the current network structure and trends, traffic profiles and service forecasts, an evolutionary approach can be envisaged, with the goal of introducing novel green network-specific paradigms and concepts that would gradually lead to the reduction of energy requirements of wired network equipment by 50% in the short to mid-term (and by 80% in the long run) with respect to the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. To this end, the main challenge will be to design, develop and test novel technologies, integrated control criteria and mechanisms for network equipment capable of enabling energy saving. While dynamically adapting network capacities and resources to current traffic loads and user needs, the control framework should ensure at the same time the satisfaction of end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The talk will outline the vision of the ECONET project in this respect, with particular emphasis on dynamic adaptation (adaptive rate and low power idle) and smart sleeping techniques applied at the device and network level, and on the concept of Green Abstraction Layer (GAL), a standard interface to provide a common vision of heterogeneous data plane energy-aware hardware to the control plane.