There is no need to argue why we need to control our energy usage nowadays. The ICT sector is a major energy consumer, and the Internet accounts for a big part of the total [1]. The “Internet” infrastructure is made of various devices, including servers, routers, switches, and links between those, either wired or wireless.
Reducing the energy consumed by those devices is important, but you cannot control what you cannot measure! (original quote) The power profile of routers and switches, in particular, is not well understood. More specifically, it is unclear how to configure those devices to optimize for energy, and how much saving this can yield.
The goal of this project is to derive a power profile for a programmable Intel Barefoot Tofino Switch [2] and investigate how to configure or program it to optimize its energy consumption.
This model will be the basis of further research to investigate the potential energy savings on larger networking by putting devices and links “to sleep” [3].
A stack of Tofino switches. How much energy does it cost to have all these ports on?
