Daily Network Monitor

Making Your Pipe Greener

Your reaction to this post may vary depending on your ‘green’ view. I am not a ‘green’ fanatic by any means but I actively try to do my part to keep the place we call home (earth) safe for the next generation. Bombarded daily by environmental commercials, I am also afraid of leasing penalties – after all, I am constantly reminded that I did not inherit this home from my parents and grandparents as I had been accustomed to thinking but rather I am leasing it from my son and the rest of his generation. Having seen his 2-year-old temper explode already, I am sure he would penalize me immediately if he found my behavior degraded his place of habitation in any way.

Earlier this week, the IEEE introduced a new initiative designed to make idle or underutilized Ethernet connections more energy efficient, which could mean huge electrical cost savings for large enterprises. The trick: finding a way to seamlessly throttle between 10Mbps and 10Gbps.

Per their announcement, “The standards outfit recently formed an Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) study group to explore how to do this. The idea is to save power in PCs and laptops (most of which ship with GigE cards now) when LAN links are idle, or not utilizing full bandwidth. Researchers estimate that U.S. companies could collectively save $450 million a year in power costs by using such a technology.”

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