GreenTouch GreenMeter core network power consumption models and results

This paper summarizes the energy efficiency improvement obtained by implementing a number of techniques in the core network investigated by the GreenTouch consortium. These techniques include the use of improved components with lower power consumption, mixed line rates (MLR), energy efficient routing, sleep and physical topology optimization. We consider an example continental network topology, NSFNET, to evaluate the total power consumption of a 2010 network and a 2020 network. The 2020 network results are based on traffic projections, the reductions in the equipment power consumption expected by 2020 and a range of energy saving measures considered by GreenTouch as outlined above. The projections of the 2020 equipment power consumption are based on two scenarios: a business as usual (BAU) scenario and a Green Touch (GT) (i.e. BAU+GT) scenario. The results show that the 2020 BAU scenario improves the network energy efficiency by a factor of 4.8x compared to the 2010 network as a result of the reduction in the network equipment power consumption. Considering the 2020 BAU+GT network where the equipment power consumption is reduced by a factor of 27x compared to the 2010 network, and where sleep, MLR and network topology are jointly optimized, a total improvement in energy efficiency of 64x is obtained.