The energy demands of Ethernet links have been an active focus of research in the recent years. This work has enabled a new generation of energy-efficient Ethernet (EEE) interfaces able to adapt their power consumption to the actual traffic demands, thus yielding significant energy savings. With the energy consumption of single network connections being a solved problem, in this paper, we focus on the energy demands of link aggregates that are commonly used to increase the capacity of a network connection. We build on known energy models of single EEE links to derive the energy demands of the whole aggregate as a function on how the traffic load is spread among its powered links. We then provide a practical method to share the load that minimizes overall energy consumption with controlled packet delay and prove that it is valid for a wide range of EEE links. Finally, we validate our method with both synthetic and real traffic traces captured in Internet backbones.
Another source of inefficiency identified in @cite_31 was the physical interfaces of network devices. At that time, physical interfaces drew a constant amount of power, regardless of the actual traffic load. Preliminary works tried to mitigate this either by adapting the transmission speed @cite_30 , with lower speeds demanding less power, or by briefly switching off the physical interfaces when there is none or very little traffic to send @cite_2 @cite_18 . Finally, the IEEE 802.3az @cite_20 standard was sanctioned providing a new low power mode to physical Ethernet interfaces that could be used when there was no need to send traffic.
@cite_30 @cite_18 @cite_2 @cite_31 @cite_20
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The recently approved Energy Efficient Ethernet standard IEEE 802.3az achieves energy savings by using a low power mode when the link is idle. However, those savings heavily depend on the traffic patterns, due to the overhead inherent in transitions between active and low power modes. This makes it impractical to estimate energy savings through measurements or simulations in all relevant scenarios. In this letter we present an analytical model to estimate the energy consumption of an Energy Efficient Ethernet link, based on simple traffic parameters. The model is validated through simulation and experimental data. In September 2010, the Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) standard was officially approved. This new standard introduces a low power mode for the most common Ethernet physical layer standards and is expected to provide large energy savings. In this letter, for the first time, Network Interface Cards (NICs) that implement Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) are used to measure energy savings with real traffic. The data presented will be useful to better estimate the energy savings that can be achieved when EEE is deployed. Existing analysis of EEE based on simulations predict a large overhead due to mode transitions between active and low power modes. The experimental results confirm that transition overheads can be significant, leading to almost full energy consumption even at low utilization levels. Therefore traffic patterns will play a key role in the energy savings achieved by EEE as it becomes deployed in the field. Most Ethernet interfaces available for deployment in switches and hosts today can operate in a variety of different low power modes. However, currently these modes have very limited usage models. They do not take advantage of periods of inactivity, when the links remain idle or under-utilized. In this study, we propose methods that allow for detection of such periods to obtain energy savings with little impact on loss or delay. We evaluate our methods on a wide range of real-time traffic traces collected at a high-speed backbone switch within our campus LAN. Our results show that Ethernet interfaces at both ends can be put in extremely low power modes anywhere from 40 -98 of the time observed. In addition, we found that approximately 37 of interfaces studied (on the same switch) can be put in low power modes simultaneously which opens the potential for further energy savings in the switching fabric within the switch. Energy Efficient Ethernet, as defined by the IEEE 802.3az standard, has shown not to be as efficient as originally expected given the large values of the transition times between the active and sleep power modes. In fact, EEE performs nearly optimal only when the link load is either very low or very high, but never at medium loads. So, in order to achieve large power savings, then it is necessary to design a flow allocation algorithm that allocates traffic demands on links that avoid medium traffic loads on links, since these are far from optimal. This work defines EEE-FA, an energy-aware flow allocation algorithm that computes the best possible route in terms of energy consumption for a given network load condition. Essentially, EEE-FA computes the K-shortest paths for a given traffic demand and evaluates the consumption impact of allocating the traffic demand on each of them, in order to further select that route with minimum energy consumption impact for a given network status. This algorithm is compared with shortest path routing and it is shown that important energy savings may be achieved, however at the expense of increasing the global network traffic load and the average number of hops per demand as a consequence of using sub-optimal (in terms of distance) routes.