Networks are sucking power: should you worry?

The IEEE P802.3az committee is developing an appropriate standard for all the 10 Gigabit Ethernet PHYs. Haugh says that its development focus includes the ability “to allow a port to go into low power mode if nothing happening, and a wake-up packet will bring it back up. And chipsets are now competing on power consumption – we are talking to [chip vendors] Marvell and Broadcom about this.”

There’s also a range of other standards springing up in this area. Haugh cites the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Energy Consumption Rating (ECR) Initiative among them. “Juniper has been very proactive and is active in ATIS and helps drive development,” says Haugh.

“In testing, one of the big problems we’re still facing is awareness,” says Haugh. “However, people are agreeing on methodologies and measurements and, with ATIS and ECF, we’re getting to the point where we have a compelling story and there’s information there to be compared.”

Large enterprises and telecoms vendors – also large users of high-speed networking equipment – are starting to take this issue seriously. “This is an increasing problem for those such as Google, as their data centres are increasingly dense. Cisco is building power consumption reporting into its switches, and its data centres have a power consumption display at the entrance,” reports Haugh.

Testing against the real world

As a test equipment vendor, Haugh was naturally keen to stress the need for end users to test real-world power consumption against the vendor’s power rating, and to say that his company will be offering a power efficiency measurement service.

And until the standards bodies have concluded their deliberations, that is likely to be a key option for many end users.

“To fully use a 400-port switch you must have had it tested fully loaded,” says Haugh. “I challenge you to find a data sheet from a network manufacturer that provides energy efficiency information. You can’t just define or decide what the energy efficiency is without testing it.”