IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE)

e-ISSN: 2278-0661,p-ISSN: 2278-8727, Volume 17, Issue 6, Ver. III (Nov Dec. 2015), PP 15-21
www.iosrjournals.org

Review on Green Networking Solutions

Mansi Virani
(Computer Engineering Department, Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering
(NMIMS University), Mumbai)

Abstract : Empirical studies have revealed that a significant amount of energy is lost unnecessarily in the
network architectures, protocols, routers and various other network devices. Thus there is a need for techniques
to obtain green networking in the computer architecture which can lead to energy saving. Green networking is
an emerging phenomenon in the computer industry because of its economic and environmental benefits. Saving
energy leads to cost-cutting and lower emission of greenhouse gases which are apparently one of the major
threats to the environment. Greening as the name suggests is the process of constructing network architecture
in such a way so as to avoid unnecessary loss of power and energy due its various components and can be
implemented using various techniques out of which four are mentioned in this review paper, namely Adaptive
link rate (ALR), Dynamic Voltage and Frequency scaling(DVFS), Interface proxying and energy aware
applications and software.
Keywords: Green networking, Adaptive link rate (ALR), Greening, Interface Proxying, Dynamic voltage and
frequency scaling (DVFS), Energy aware applications, Energy aware software, over-provisioning, selective
connectedness, resource consolidation, proportional computing

I.

INTRODUCTION

There is an immense need to conserve energy in every possible way. Saving energy is not just
restricted to the transport, industrial or domestic sectors. It has also reached to the Information and
Communication Technology sector (ICT). It may seem a little blur and unthinkable but the network components
and devices operating in an industrial firm, data centers, IT farms etc. are responsible for the emissions of
Greenhouse Gases (GHG), mainly carbon dioxide. It is not indiscernible to expect and approximate the harm
caused by these emissions to the environment and thus to mankind.
Its not just the environment that is getting damaged, it also impacts the economy as there is a loss of
energy and power that could be saved using proper techniques in the architecture or the core framework. Thus in
this work solutions are presented as well as their prospects to achieve greening of networks, i.e. designing the
networks in an energy and power saving manner to overcome the ambiguities and the loopholes in the existing
ones.
1.1 Existing Problem
The network components and devices are designed in such a manner so as to handle the peak load
traffic. This results into two obvious problems which are also the characteristics of the existing architecture:
over-provisioning and redundancy. Dan Chen et al state that The two major drivers for energy efficient
networking are: (a) high carbon footprints because of electrical energy use and (b) consumption of an enormous
amount of energy by the networking equipment and the resulting high cost of energy [1].
Energy consumption in the ICT sector leads to the emission of Green House Gases (GHG). The ICT
sector is responsible for almost two percent of the man-made carbon dioxide emissions for every 1 TeraWatt
hour (TWh) energy consumption, which is approximately equal to that made by the global aviation industry,
with the potential risk of its increment(by almost six percent). If this be the condition, not only will the cost of
maintenance and production rise, but it will also pose a major threat to the environment which cannot be
ignored.
1.2 Proposed Solutions
Almost all the network devices remain active for most of the time independent of their utilization. For
instance, the NIC remains idle for most of the time and its average load is 5 percent for normal computers and
30 percent for servers [1]. Also the idle links that are not used in packet transfer are responsible for causing
unnecessary traffic in the network which can be avoided using proper techniques. Thus, summarizing the
aforementioned facts, the solutions for green networking can be summed up as

Utilizing renewable energy in ICT sectors

Designing components to operate on low power

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Review on Green Networking Solutions

Geographical re-localization of network resources and devices

Fault tolerant and secure service migration

There are a number of ways of greening the networks. In general, all these ways fall under one of the
following key characteristics of green network architecture

Resource consolidation: This feature exploits the characteristic of over-provisioning of the networks. It
demands shutting down underutilized devices and consolidating the network load on a selected cluster of
active components.
Selective connectedness: This characteristic calls for transitioning the idle devices to low power or sleep
modes as transparently as possible, thus transferring the traffic on some other device that is active. Interface
proxying uses this technique thereby freeing the main end device.
Virtualization: This characteristic refers to operating multiple services at a single piece of hardware, thus
reducing the under-utilization of resources which in turn reduces the energy consumption.
Proportional Computing: This characteristic refers to the concept of consuming energy proportional to
resource utilization. This means that idle devices or components should consume less energy as compared
to the active or working devices. This is characteristic of the two techniques of Adaptive Link Rate (ALR)
and Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS).

Fig. 1. Characteristics of green network architecture.

II.

Techniques To Achieve Green Network Architecture

This section aims at understanding the four widely used techniques to achieve greening of computer
networks. There are other related techniques too, but since they require a wider perspective and complex
purview, the focus here will only be on the following methods for a more adjacent and converged aspect.
2.1 Adaptive Link Rate
Experimental results showed that energy consumption in an Ethernet cable is independent of the link
utilization.Even when there are no data packets being sent, links are being continuously sent and received to
maintain synchronization and to avoid time delay in case of transmission of a longer frame. This leads to
unnecessary energy loss without work being done. This issue can however be avoided by properly adapting the
link rates by the following two methods2.1.1 Changing the state of the links to sleep/idle mode
This state allows the links to function in either sleep mode or a fully awake mode. Depending on the
reactivity of the links to the network traffic following situations may arise
Drop packet in sleep mode: These policies discard any incoming packet during sleep state
Fully awake on packet arrival: These policies transition to active state when a packet arrives during sleep
state
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Review on Green Networking Solutions

Wake-up on meeting the buffer threshold: Packets are buffered for later processing during sleep state. The
link is transitioned to active state either on sleep interval timeout, or when number of incoming packets
increases a threshold[1]
Buffer the packets to process them in the active state: These policies buffer the incoming packets in sleep
state to process later when link becomes active
Use shadow ports to service the packets on behalf of cluster of sleeping ports: These policies use dedicated
port (Shadow port) for a cluster of sleeping ports to process packets on behalf of the sleeping ports.

Even though this serves to be an effective technique to save energy, there are chances of energy
consumption at various transitions, like the one from sleep mode to active. Another disadvantage includes the
loss of data packets in case the links are in sleep mode and the time delay to process the packets after returning
to active state.
2.1.2 Reducing the line rate during low utilization period, which is known as rate switching
This method refers to scaling down the link rate as it was observed that operating the links at lower
rates leads to energy saving. Experiments were performed which concluded that there is a significant difference
in power consumption among different link data rates. Gunaratne et al. [3] reported that the energy consumption
was 3 W less in switching from 1 Gb/s link speed to 100 Mb/s at NIC, and about 1.5 W less at switch interface
[2]. It was also found that 99 percent of the time links can be operated at 10 Mb/s, without any perceivable delay
by users [2]. The link rate scaling can further be categorized on the following basis

Link Utilization and buffer occupancy: These policies consider buffer occupancy along with link utilization.
They also prevent the switching of data rates based on buffer occupancy
Buffer occupancy: These policies consider buffer occupancy to transition the link to lower data rates and
the reverse.
Heuristics: These policies use heuristics to determine the time that is needed to remain in a switched state
and data rate switch.

2.2 Interface Proxying

As the name suggests interface proxying involves the use of a proxy that acts as an interface to the
incoming traffic and can also process it at times. As compared to the ALR technique where the functionalities
could be turned off, in the case of an end device, this is not possible and the traffic needs to be processed. This
means that even though the users are idle, the constant incoming background traffic needs to be processed.
However, keeping the end device in an active mode to deal with this traffic will cost much more energy than
what is required for the traffic computation. Thus to overcome this problem, a proxy acts as the end device and
processes the traffic that require minimal computation. Interface proxying can further be divided into internal
(Network Interface Card) and external interface proxying.
2.2.1 Network Interface Card (NIC)
An NIC is inbuilt in the CPU which contains a low energy processor and remains idle most of the time.
Thus it can be utilized for filtering or light processing of data packets. The NIC may drop the chatter while the
full system activates only on the incoming of non-trivial packets that require further processing.
This allows energy saving without disrupting the network connectivity. Usual exchanges, such as ARP
[Address Resolution Protocol] processing, ICMP [Internet Control Message Protocol] echo answering or DHCP
[Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol] rebinding, are simple tasks that could be easily performed directly by
the network interface.
Extending this technique, some more complex tasks usually performed by the main CPU to the NIC are
offloaded. The experiments show that it is possible, through the use of dedicated memory or direct memory
access (DMA), to handle most of the network tasks that do not need interaction from the user, like Peer-to-Peer
(P2P) applications, FTP downloads, status message update on Instant Messaging (IM) systems, etc.
2.2.2 External Proxying
External proxying is used in larger Local Area Networks (LANs) where a proxy acts as an interface
for all the devices connected to it and thus offloads the main end host from a number of network maintenance
tasks apart from the economy of scale.
External energy-aware proxies have also been evaluated in the context of P2P file-sharing applications.
In P2P, edge device network presence represents a key issue to guarantee the robustness of the network: in this
case, interface proxying represents a good way to save energy, without disturbing the system[2].
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2.3 Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling(DVFS)
DVFS, like ALR involves proportional computing. It aims at reducing the power and energy
consumption of microprocessors since they are estimated to consume almost 50 percent of the total energy of a
computer system. Under this method, analysis on the Complementary Metal Oxide Semi-Conductor(CMOS) is
done since all digital circuits these days are constructed using CMOS, especially processors. Considering the
equation (1):
Pdynamic CL Vdd2 fclk
Where CL is the collective switching capacitance, Vdd2 is the supply voltage and fclk is the clock
frequency.
It can be concluded that lowering the supply voltage can reduce considerable amount of energy because
of the square relation. Reducing the operating frequency and supply voltage can further reduce the energy and
power consumption.

Fig. 2 Approximate amount of energy that can be saved

There are three key components for implementing DVFS
An operating system that can vary processor speed.
A control loop that generates voltage required for desired speed.
A microprocessor that can operate over a range of voltages.
Constraint: A processor goes to sleep because of some special instruction, and then it is woken up by
certain interrupts, which cause idle intervals between the tasks. Thus, work load of the processor normally
consists of a sequence of tasks and idles between tasks.

Fig. 3: A typical workload pattern with tasks and idle time between tasks
By scaling down the voltage and frequency each task is extended into the idle time after it. As long as
the tasks do not overlap, DVFS is guaranteed to be correct.

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Fig. 4: A typical workload pattern with DVFS technique

But before designing the DVFS technique it is essential to prototype the workload. The concept of an
event makes partitioning the workload to be possible. Two parameters and , as shown in the fig. 5, are used
to describe an event; both in the unit of time, where, measures the length of an event and measures the
length of an event plus idle time before the next event starts.
It can be concluded that utilization can be determined by dividing by . For example if utilization is
50 percent, it means that this particular event has the potential to be scaled down by a factor of two.

Fig. 5[3] Prototyping the workload with DVFS (ideal case)

2.4 Energy Aware applications and software
Energy aware applications and software meddle with the existing features of computer networks. The
aim is incorporating energy-efficient techniques in the current architecture without making any changes to their
existing functionalities. However due to robustness of the existing architectures, this technique is not widely
used. It can be further divided to user-level applications and kernel-level applications.
2.4.1 User-Level Applications
Green telnet is the best example of energy conservation at the client/server lever. Green telnet is a
modified telnet client/server that allows the client to go to sleep without breaking the session by queuing data
for the client while it is asleep. Green telnet intents to increase the usage of power management in client
machines by allowing them to go to sleep, thereby losing their connection to the server, but can still have their
sessions remain active. Once the client wakes back up, the connection is restored and the session continues as
normal. Green Telnet accomplishes this by buffering any data destined for an idle client on the server, and then
transmitting the buffered data to the client when it wakes back up [1].
2.4.2 Kernel-Level Applications
Other than greening the application-layer in the user-space, it is also possible to improve the transportlayer at kernel- level for more energy efficiency. Specifically, modification of TCP in the operating systems
kernels, would allow applications to open greener sockets, providing a framework for software developers. The
authors suggest one such modification, introducing explicit signaling at the transport layer via a specific option
(TCP SLEEP) in the TCP header, in which case the other party will buffer data received from the application
instead of sending it right away [1].

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III.

Comparison Of The Techniques

Every technique has its own approach and solves the problem in a different and unique manner. Thus
they have their advantages as well as disadvantages and mentioned below in the table.
Table 1. Advantages and Disadvantages.

IV.

Inferences

In this review paper the focus is on the four main techniques of attaining green network architecture.
Every technique is different from one another and have their own characteristic. ALR and DVFS fall under
proportional computing whereas Interface Proxying falls under selective connectedness. Unlike ALR, interface
proxying is applied at end devices. Out of all the techniques ALR is proved to be the most efficient as it directly
exploits the over-provisioning and idleness of a network saving many terawatts of energy and thus billions of
dollars. DVFS is an emerging technique and various algorithms have been proposed on it by different authors.
Energy aware applications and softwares is not that reliable due to the robustness and traditionality of the
existing networks which are difficult to change.

V.

Conclusion

Keeping in mind the aforementioned facts, conclusion can be drawn that there is a strong need for
energy and power saving, not just from the cost/investment point of view but also from the environment
perspective. The ICT sector has an adverse effect on the environment because of its current trends and
functionalities. If monitory steps are not taken, there might soon be an economical and environmental problem.
Thus this paper review on various techniques to overcome this problem. The techniques have their own
properties and target different components of an architecture. Thus a combination of all these techniques is
something that can be looked forward to for an utmost energy saving system.

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VI.

Suggestions And Future Scope

The possible prospects of this problem lie in the manner of using every technique at its target most
efficiently and also extending it to other components of a network.
As mentioned earlier, a combination of all these methods would prove to be the ultimate solution since
the entire network architecture can be aimed. DVFS can also be implemented at a basic level since it involves
changing the frequencies and voltages and thus electronic circuits.
However, this might take a few years as this is a new aspect and thus requires core research. Though
green networking is in its infancy at present, it can be meddled in many ways to obtain the most efficient
network architecture that will prove to be economical, environment-friendly and handy.
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Kashif Bilal, Samee U. Khan, Sajjad A. Madani, Khizar Hayat, Majid I. Khan, Nasro Min-Allah, Joanna Kolodziej, Lizhe Wang,
Sherali Zeadally, Dan Chen, A survey on Green communication using Adaptive Link Rate, North Dakota State University,USA,
June 29,2012
Aruna Prem Bianzino, Claude Chaudet, Dario Rossi, Jean-Louis, A survey of green networking research, Rougier Institute
TELECOM, TELECOM ParisTech, CNRS LTCI UMR 5141, Paris, France, August,2012
Diary R. Suleiman, Muhammed A. Ibrahim, Ibrahim I. Hamarash, Dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS) for microprocessors
power and energy reduction, University of Salahaddin-Hawler, Eril,Iraq

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