Optimisation of Power Consumption in Wired Packet Networks

Over 500 million host computers, three billion PCs and mobile devices consume over a billion kilowatts of electricity. As part of this “system” computer networks consume an increasing amount of energy, and help reduce energy expenditure from other sources through E-Work, E-Commerce and E-Learning. Traditionally, network design seeks to minimise network cost and maximise quality of service (QoS). This paper examines some approaches for dynamically managing wired packet networks to minimise energy consumption while meeting users’ QoS needs, by automatically turning link drivers and/or routers on/off in response to changes in network load.