IEEE Seeks For Ethernet To 'Go Green'

alphadogg submitted a piece at the NetworkWorld site about the IEEE's efforts to introduce energy efficiency to Ethernet use. The group's Energy Efficient Ethernet group is looking into methods by which standards can be tweaked to encourage power savings. Current plans include ways to make computers 'choosier' about what level of bandwidth they're using. Idle systems would only run at 10Mbps, while email might draw 100Mbs, and scale up to 1000Mbps for large downloads and streaming video. The group is planning to discuss changes to the Ethernet link and higher layers. No restrictions are planned for device manufacturers, although the article suggests some companies might try to use energy efficiency as a competitive advantage. The EEE group estimates some $450 million a year could be saved via the use of energy efficient Ethernet technology.

Saving energy now

Seems they are saving energy by throttling bandwidth for the article. Any manage to read it?

Re:Saving energy now

Given the number of times that autonegotiation has given me headaches because supposedly compliant devices couldn't agree on how to setup a connection, I wouldn't want to set this up on any of my networks. I just can't see myself explaining to the CIO that the reason that the ERP is slow to the point of being unusable is because the core switches renegotiated their bandwidth down to 10Mbit/sec overnight when they were unused and were unable to ramp it back up again correctly. There is a reason that autonegotiation is often disabled & it's called experience...

Acronym confusion?

Once Apple adds the ability to negotiate EEE in Macs, they'll call it iEEE.

Re:Acronym confusion?

It's the IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet Initiative.

Or, the IEEEEEEI.

Commonly pronounced "eye-six-N-eye".

I have an idea

Use more zeros and fewer ones.

Power over Ethernet Could Help

One of the easiest ways that the Ethernet people could encourage energy efficiency would be by promoting greater use of Power Over Ethernet. By moving networked devices away from each having an individual wall wart, which are typically inefficient (as well as inconvenient), PoE lets you concentrate the AC to DC conversion in one place, for greater efficiency. As long as you don't have terribly long cable runs, I think there would be a significant net savings overall.

The number of networked devices people are going to have in their homes is only going to grow. I think a big segment could be in "Micro NAS" devices, basically single HD boxes that plug in to a home network and add storage that's accessible from any computer in the home. They're smaller and cheaper than RAIDed NAS solutions, but more convenient for people who have multiple computers than a FireWire or USB2.0 hard drive. And then you have routers, WiFi APs, network cameras, set-top-boxes for playing back video and audio, etc. All of those light-draw devices could be powered over the network connection instead of each having a wall wart.

Re:Power over Ethernet Could Help

Running power over tiny 24 gauge wires is very inefficient too. Try again.

Re:Power over Ethernet Could Help

Just because it doesn't generate heat doesn't mean it isn't losing power. The energy wasted in relation to the power on the cable is probably quite high (DC doesn't travel well, that's why wall power is AC remember) compared to just wiring up wall sockets and using warts or switching PSUs.

You're just transferring the wall-wart to another room though, and making the loss over the cable add to the power inefficiency. Imagine the extra airconditioning provision the room with the new site-wide AC-DC converter will need :D

PoE is a clever way to power devices that are in hard to power places (where you can wire a network using a thin cable but far away from a power socket) and keeps devices cheap (no need to do anything but DC-DC conversion from PoE to components) but it's not any better energy-efficiency-wise.

Can't this IEEE stuff they're talking about simply be built into drivers? I know my laptop ethernet (Intel) has the ability to scale down the ethernet speed when the battery is in use, or during standby and so on. Would it cause too much trouble to have the driver anticipate and schedule a renegotiation on a power source change or based on activity? Why would ethernet vendors need to be involved if it was simply a driver 'problem' - apart from having to write drivers that do it for their hardware (which most of them DO already).

Can't we have a sysctl or a sysfs tweak in Linux/BSD/whatever to demonstrate it and see if it even helps? Does networking hardware at the other end (for instance a 32-port Cisco switch) actually use less power if half it's ports are at 10mbit rather than 100mbit?

Can't we do this with wireless? 802.11b etc. already has power calibration built in but could it pull it back when the bandwidth requirement isn't so high, saving battery life and not polluting the airwaves with high powered chatter? My card uses the same transmit power whatever the state of the laptop is..

Re:Power over Ethernet Could Help

(DC doesn't travel well, that's why wall power is AC remember)

This is a very common misconception. Low voltages don't travel well because you need more current (i.e: amps) to carry the same amount of power and this requires bigger wires. The main reason your wall power is AC is because it's easier and cheaper to build transformers for AC that convert high voltages (for distribution) into low voltages (for usage).

DC is actually used in electrical distribution. It's known as HVDC [wikipedia.org] and it's actually more efficient then AC because it doesn't have to contend with capacitance issues.

Re:Power over Ethernet Could Help

An idea I've always thought about is converting to DC supplies indoors. AC has an advantage in terms of long-distance transmission, but in this day and age a HUGE part of our electric use is in devices that require DC power. Hell, many of the things that run AC (like lights) can in fact run DC with nary a problem. It's always boggled my mind why we have a bajillion power bricks sitting around, each venting heat like mad converting AC/DC, when in fact we could have a much more efficient "main" transformer installed in the house that does it on a larger scale and feeds our devices directly.

I imagine this would be even more useful for heavy power using environments like server farms - imagine if you can do with the huge boxy PSUs in every single box and just have a unified DC power source that can FAR more efficient than what's in the average beige boxen.

Re:Power over Ethernet Could Help

An idea I've always thought about is converting to DC supplies indoors. AC has an advantage in terms of long-distance transmission, but in this day and age a HUGE part of our electric use is in devices that require DC power. Hell, many of the things that run AC (like lights) can in fact run DC with nary a problem. It's always boggled my mind why we have a bajillion power bricks sitting around, each venting heat like mad converting AC/DC, when in fact we could have a much more efficient "main" transformer installed in the house that does it on a larger scale and feeds our devices directly.

I imagine this would be even more useful for heavy power using environments like server farms - imagine if you can do with the huge boxy PSUs in every single box and just have a unified DC power source that can FAR more efficient than what's in the average beige boxen.

It is a good idea; in fact it's such a good idea that people have been thinking about ways to try and implement it in datacenters for a while. Unfortunately one of the bigger problems is that most motherboards don't run off of a single voltage; they have +5, -5, +3.3, +12, and so on. There has been a push by some big server-farm operators, Google in particular, to encourage board makers to produce mobos that only require a single +12V supply, because then you could do exactly what you say: have a big AC to DC converter somewhere (probably running from a medium-voltage AC main) and then distribute the 12VDC around to the racks.

It was a Slashdot article back in September:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/ 26/2039213 [slashdot.org]

Green

IEEE Seeks For Ethernet To 'Go Green'

That's good because I'm really tired of the white and blue.

Well Duh!!

Another suggestion - Stop all the spamming. There must be a coal-powered powerplant's worth of electricity right there.

What about the power supplies...

Sounds like someone is really starting at the wrong end. IMHO.

I'd estimate that power supply inefficiency chews up more than this proposal will ever save. If you spent your time making the power supplies of PC's, Switches, routers more efficient you'd probably have a greater impact. How about better efficiency in the FET's, transistors and amplifier circuitry? Last time I checked, my Ethernet looms didn't get that hot. (isn't it all about "(i^2).R"?. Heck turning off the light in the switch room probably does more to save power. Plus all the heat im my server room is from the servers, not the Ethernet. If your that worried, switch to fiber.

I thought the transfer of data at the physical layer was through the transfer of 'holes' anyway.

Re:What about the power supplies...

Exactly. All the hundreds of devices independently converting AC voltage to DC all day long is far more power waste than what's inside the CAT5. Speaking of, whatever happened to the push for DC datacenters? As far as I can tell, there's still no widely-used DC standard as an option for most of the devices in a small-medium sized environment

Question?

Does 100 (or 1000) really take that much power to download one "file", or is it the same amount of power used, just in a shorter time period?

Or is it power used while idle? Does a 1000 device comsume more power idling in that mode than a 10 device would?

Measurable?

Does that much current actually go over ethernet transmissions? It seems to be that more power could be saved by more efficient power supplies in the switches than by wasting a lot of time and research in figuring a way to throttle link speeds. Does anybody have a value for the amount of electricity used for an hour's worth of data at 10 megabits as opposed to 1 gigabit?

It just surprises me that +/-5 volts over copper really makes all that much difference compared to all the other waste in the datacenter.

Also, what's the difference in energy usage for copper vs fiber links??

Re:Measurable?

Actually, it is pretty surprising how much current Gigabit takes- The output drives usually work in a current mode, and they draw 40mA per pair- since gigabit uses 4 pairs, that's 160mA on each end of a gigabit link. *But* the big difference is in what happens when the link is idling- 10mbit only puts through link test pulses, but 100Mbit and Gigabit both keep up idle patterns that are basically encoded strings of no information- this keeps both ends of the link ready to accept data- 10Mbit has to transmit a synchronization series of pulses to make sure both ends are clocking at the same rate. For 100 and gig, at least to the output drivers, they draw the same amount idling or transmitting at line-speed.

They don't like orange?

I see no reason to switch from 568B to 568A.

Weak article

It would have been nice if the article had broken down the network power consumption down into something useful like the number of Watts for a single 10/100/1000 Mbps port, instead they bury it under the total IT power consumption. In the end, when I have to weigh the cost of upgrading my PC vs the energy savings, I'd like useful benchmarks.

Beware of the over-complicators gloves maytee

It seems to me that the energy savings would be more beneficial to whoever pays the bill on the huge server farms rather than individual "normal people" who have a small ethernet running at their house or small business and whatnot. I hope they will shift away from this and focus on another area where they can actually make a difference that would noticeably benefit everyone; I especially like the idea of improving power supply efficiency (which is a bigger problem that just ethernets, IMO). One way to do this would be to get devices running directly off of direct AC current. IIRC, you can avoid a 20% penalty hit incurred from during the conversion from AC->DC that you get with normal power supplies.

Beware of the gloves of the over-complicators [thedailywtf.com] :p

--
Wi-Fizzle Research [wi-fizzle.com]

How does it compare to fiber for power usage

How does a typical gigabit ethernet cabling installation compare to the same network using fiber cabling in terms of power usage?

By any chance...

...is this group led by ethernet equipment vendors? Perhaps vendors who are unhappy with the recent decline in equipment upgrades since people aren't upgrading from gigabit or even to gigabit from 100mbit in a way that helps their stock price sufficiently?

It seems to me that, considering the number of ports active out there, they're talking about a tiny amount of savings per port for a total investment that could have a much larger effect if spent elsewhere.

Hell, I bet more power is wasted by the power supplies, overly conservative fan controls, uncleaned air filters, shorted out UPS batteries that should have been replaced decades ago, overpowered CPUs, and crappily written firmware of the currently deployed switches than is consumed by transmission losses.

A greener idea!

Imagine fiber with green laser - how green is that!

I recall the first time I noticed ethernet power

At an office I once worked, there were a lot of spare switches laying about after upgrading to 1000BaseT. They were considered "spare" or whatever, but there was a great many... so I sorta brought one home and mounted it into my rack and used it for a couple of months. The next two electric bills made me rethink how nice it looked to have a 24 port switch in my rack instead of that cheapy 8 port sitting on a shelf. It consumed a NOTABLE amount of power. Now, there were other things involved I'm sure... things like the changes of the seasons, global warming and all that. But when I brought the switch back to the office and went back to my cheapy 8 port again, I saw a change in my power bill.

If I ever decide to spend money on a nice looking switch, I'll be sure to reference the power draw of the units I review.

Welcome to tech support hell

Meanwhile, far more than $450 million would be spent on IT support services, troubleshooting problems created by computers that keep changing their link speed.

Slashdot the Power Grid

Wow, that's awesome! Now when you get DDoSed and your power suddenly spikes above the level it's been the last three years, you start popping breakers!

Patch cables are now easier than ever!

So a straight-through is: Green white / Green / Green white / Green / Green white / Green / Green white / Green Sweet. Crossovers then would be: Green white / Green / Green white / Green white / Green / Green / Green / Green white So much easier to remember! Thanks, IEEE!

Two methods

> idle or underutilized Ethernet connections more energy efficient

There are several ways to increase measured efficiency. Two of them include:

1) Load the network with verbose transmission protocols, junk, or spam such that more network cards have higher sustained traffic (quantity means more than quality from the usage point of view).

2) Increase the number of hardware exploits such that underused network adapters can be continually used by those who know of the hardware exploits (make the network adapters available to those who have convinced themselves that they need more bandwidth than they're willing to pay for)

This is _not_ a troll. :)

Do my eyes deceive me?

The group is planning to discuss changes to the Ethernet link and higher layers.

The first time I read that, I thought it said "The group is planning to discuss changes to the Ethernet link and hire lawyers."

Let me get this straight...

Okay, there's two things that could consume power in an ethernet connection: maintaining the circuit at a given voltage level (ie steady state), and switching the signal (ie, sending a bit, modulo whatever encoding scheme is used).

For a given chunk of data -- email, text message, video clip, whatever -- you have a certain number of bits which is going to require a certain number of signal switches, whether you do those at 10M/sec or 1000M/sec. So, no energy savings there.

You also need to keep the circuit open, regardless of whether or not you're sending a signal over it. (Unless you want to try syncronizing the connection times: "call me every 7 minutes past the hour" or something. Not very practical). No energy savings there either.

So how, exactly, do they figure this is energy saving? (If anything, the extra bits sent for negotiation make it worse, no?)

Hmmm....

    Don't get me wrong. I'm all for being green. But it would seem that instead of putting all of that effort, design time, and eventual costs in equipment in order to save a very small number of watts on the ethernet chips at each end of the link, a slightly larger effort directed into power supply losses, CPU power usage, or GPU power usage would yield 10x the benefits.

    Realistically, I know that they can't just walk over to Intel, AMD, and NVidia, and say "Alright, guys, we're here to tell you how to use less power." They're just doing what they can, and they deserve applause for it.

$450 Million!

$450 million dollars! I really hope my boss reads this! I can just see his beady little eyes all a-glow at Monday morning's staff meeting. It'll be a green glow alright!

This means that we in the IT department will be given another measure of job security, or fired, because nothing will work and we'll have to buy new equipment to comply with the new standards. You know we will.

The IEEE didn't do this just because it means selling more gear, but I'm sure they weren't really upset at the idea either. Let's not delude ourselves too much about that point, it's not as though the members of the IEEE have nothing to do with the business of selling networking equipment, although I'm sure their first concern was the savings they could pass on to thier customers. They're propably really concerned about the environment too, I guess.

Re:hmmm, who's that behind the curtain?

Calm down. IEEE [wikipedia.org] is the electrical engineering professional organization. They are the ones who collectively decide on most of the electrical standards in use (e.g., IEEE 802.11g). They have no interest in bowing down to corporations.

Re:My Money Says...

Yup, just like all those other Windows-only IEEE standards like, uh... no, sorry, can't think of a single one.

Re:I'd rather that they got auto-negotiation worki

Stop using shitty wiring (Autonegotiation only deals with endpoint capabilities, not with cable quality), stop connecting forced full duplex equipment to autonegotiated equipment (why? go read the 802.3 spec or just take my word that it isn't going to work well).

Problem solved.

Re:They don't know what they are talking about

What are you talking about? Why would you send an email with no content attached? Every email sent has to have a 400k word document, about two pages of written text, with no special formatting. It's some kind of requirement in business settings.