Responsive algorithms for handling load surges and switching links on in green networks

Reducing the energy consumed by wired computer networks is a challenge that has been actively investigated over the past few years. A popular mechanism proposed to reduce the consumption aims to put links and line cards to sleep mode during off-peak hours. Such a mechanism, however, decreases the available network capacity and increases the risk of congestion if traffic rises unexpectedly. This paper proposes a solution to rapidly react to network bursts and turn-on sleeping links, which we term as SegmenT Routing based Energy Efficient Traffic Engineering for switching ON (STREETE-ON). The proposed algorithm was implemented in the OMNeT++ network simulator using state-of-art dynamic graph algorithms. In such a way, we achieved execution times of tens of milliseconds for a 50-node network. Experimental results show that STREETE-ON can effectively prevent network congestion, avoid turning-on unneeded links, and preserve good energy-efficiency of the network.