Green virtual networks for cloud computing

Information and communication technology (ICT) profoundly impacts on environment because of its large amount of CO
₂
emissions. In the past years, the research field of “green” and low power consumption networking infrastructures is of great importance for both service/network providers and equipment manufacturers. An emerging technology called cloud computing can increase the utilization and efficiency of hardware equipments. It can potentially reduce the global CO
₂
emission. In this paper, we propose a virtual network architecture for cloud computing. Our virtual network can provide communication functions for virtual resources in cloud computing. We design an energy aware routing algorithm for our virtual router. We also design an efficient method for setting up the virtual network. The objective is to build a “green” virtual network in cloud computing.