ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the exploration of power/energy-saving mechanisms through the design of Internet transmission equipment, e.g., routers. Several intrinsic characteristics of Internet behaviors imply the opportunities of applying energy-saving techniques in routers toward an energy-efficient Internet. The dynamics of data traffic rate allows us to incorporate energy control mechanisms in the router design, e.g., adapting router processing speed based on the detected traffic rate or queue length. From the energy efficiency perspective, there remains a large potential to optimize the design of router packet processing components through various techniques, e.g., reducing the peak power of the processor using architectural approaches. The chapter describes a Multi-Frequency Scaling scheme for energy conservation of network devices like routers and switches. It argues that the architecture of the routers to construct the Internet can be improved so as to fully utilize the chances to save the energy related to transmission equipment.
