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Greening the NetFPGA Reference Router

2016; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 9; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/en9070500

1996-1073

Guo Feng, Xiaojun Wang, Mei Song, Yifei Wei, Olga Ormond, Martin Collier,

Software-Defined Networks and 5G

Energy efficiency is an important criterion in the design of next generation networks for both economic and environmental concerns. This paper presents an energy-efficient router that is able to dynamically adapt its routing capability in response to real-time traffic load, achieving energy proportional routing. The NetFPGA reference router, which operates at one of two frequencies (125 MHz or 62.5 MHz), requires a board reset to switch frequencies. We have modified the reference router to allow dynamic switching among five operating frequencies. Experiments with real traces indicate that, compared to the reference router, a 10% power reduction can be achieved through dynamic frequency scaling. When the router is further modified to support green traffic engineering and Ethernet port shut-down, power consumption can be reduced by 46% while maintaining the required quality of service. This allows the router to meet the instantaneous performance requirements while minimizing power dissipation. Similar results can be expected when these general power-saving principles are applied in future commercial routers.