SUSTAINABLE INTERNET

It is now held as a scientific fact that humans contribute to the global warming of planet Earth through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2), a Green House Gas (GHG), in the atmosphere. It is estimated that 2-3% of the CO2 produced by human activity comes from ICT and a number of studies estimate the energy consumption related to ICT varying from 2% to 10% of the worldwide power consumption. The reduction and optimization of energy consumption are among the main goals of the governments. The European Union in fact is encouraging the ICT sector to reduce its carbon footprint in a drive to drastically reduce Europe's overall carbon emissions by 2020 setting its ambitious 20/20/20 goals: cut its annual consumption of primary energy by 20%, increase the production of renewable energy to a share of 20% by 2020 and make efficiency savings of 20% over forecast consumption. Recent initiatives gathering major IT companies started to explore the energy savings and green energy use in network infrastructure. But the Internet traffic is growing constantly over the years (independent of the momentary economic conditions) impacting directly the network energy consumption which is in fact growing at the same degree. It is clear that increased energy consumption of the Internet will increase operational costs in the network and will exacerbate the thermal issues associated with large data centers and switching nodes. It is safe to say that a paradigm shift is required in the network in order to sustain the growing traffic rates while limiting and even decreasing the power consumption. To become a reality, green Internet must rely on a major cooperation between application, system, network, link and physical levels. This Workshop aims at providing a comprehensive view of research challenges and opportunities in the coming green era and will include both invited talks and contributed papers.