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Power Profiling the Internet Core: A Sensitivity Analysis

2012

As in many scientific domains, the accuracy of results in green networking research depends on the accuracy of the underlying energy models adopted in the study. On the one hand, researchers are in agreement regarding the need for verifiability of such models. On the other hand, they have yet to agree on an effective validation methodology to quantify the reliability of the estimated results. Often, rather different estimates are gathered, via different models, for the same power figure-which holds especially true whenever large-scale networks, as opposed to individual devices, are considered. In this chapter, the authors perform a careful sensitivity analysis of a power model for the Internet core: their results show that, no matter how carefully the data upon which the power-consumption model relies is chosen and cross-verified, the uncertainty of the overall results remains disappointingly high. The authors believe that part of the solution lies in a community-wide effort, to which they offer some initial guidance that could, if not solve the issue, at least greatly improve the current situation.

287 Chapter 13 Power Profiling the Internet Core: A Sensitivity Analysis Aruna Prem Bianzino Telecom ParisTech, France Anand Raju Telecom ParisTech, France Dario Rossi Telecom ParisTech, France ABSTRACT As in many scientific domains, the accuracy of results in green networking research depends on the accuracy of the underlying energy models adopted in the study. On the one hand, researchers are in agreement regarding the need for verifiability of such models. On the other hand, they have yet to agree on an effective validation methodology to quantify the reliability of the estimated results. Often, rather different estimates are gathered, via different models, for the same power figure—which holds especially true whenever large-scale networks, as opposed to individual devices, are considered. In this chapter, the authors perform a careful sensitivity analysis of a power model for the Internet core: their results show that, no matter how carefully the data upon which the power-consumption model relies is chosen and cross-verified, the uncertainty of the overall results remains disappointingly high. The authors believe that part of the solution lies in a community-wide effort, to which they offer some initial guidance that could, if not solve the issue, at least greatly improve the current situation. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-1842-8.ch013 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Power Profiling the Internet Core INTRODUCTION Research on green ICT is evidently gaining momentum: a rich literature exists and continues to grow on energy-thrifty networks solutions and on network power profiling analysis. As a comprehensive overview of network energy-efficiency issues is out of the scope of this chapter, we refer the reader to the literature survey by Bianzino et al. (2011) or to earlier chapters of this book. One of the most challenging aspects in green research is to gather a set of energy-related assumptions, such as device power profiles, which is both accurate for present-day devices and future-proof as well. Indeed, even considering present-day systems, it is often difficult to estimate various aspects of power measurements – as for example the power required by cooling in Katz (2009), or discrepancies between actual power drain and maximum drain reported by the equipment manufacturer in Juniper (2009a), and so on. Considering instead futuristic scenarios, it is clear that major advances originating from other areas are hardly foreseeable, but may deeply impact the overall results—as has been the case in recent years for voltage scaling (Weiser, et al., 1994) from a hardware perspective, for tickless kernels (LessWatts Project, 2009) from a software standpoint, and for adaptive link rate (Christensen, et al., 2010) from the communication networking front. To further add complexity to the picture, there are many instances of inaccurate or grossly misinterpreted results published by energy analysts and media. Moreover, errors can easily propagate, as wrong numbers replicate themselves through direct references and citations, possibly under the camouflage due to manipulation. The above statement is especially true when the estimations involve rapidly changing technologies, requiring constant updates and time-to-time verifications. Developing methodologies and performing measurement is often challenging, e.g., because of precluded access to the real infrastructures, or proprietary data-centers, very large-scale 288 networks spanning multiple domains, etc. Thus, unfortunately, gauging the exact nuance of green in the ICT context is inherently uncertain, hence prone to fallacies. Evidence of existing fallacies in the literature are uncovered only sporadically, if ever. The best-known example is represented by a Forbes magazine article by Huber and Mills (1999), which claimed that PCs and networked devices were responsible for 8% of all electricity consumed across USA. Huber and Mills (1999) also projected a staggering growth up to 50% of all electricity usage in the following 10-20 years. These numbers were widely published as well as publicized by the media, but were later debunked by a study conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) by Koomey et al. (2002), which resized the estimation to about 3%, for all office, telecommunications, and network equipment. Along similar lines, more recently, an article published by Wissner-Gross (2009) on BBC News estimated that a couple of Google searches on a desktop computer produces about 14 g of CO2, which is roughly the equivalent of boiling an electric kettle. These figures were later countered by Google (2009), claiming instead that a typical search produces only 0.2 g of CO2. Relative overestimation in this case is in the order of 70×, which raises the question on how to disprove the erroneous figures, or at least whether the gap in such diverse estimations could be significantly narrowed down, e.g., by using more accurate input values for power models. In our work, we investigate a similar issue, i.e., namely a disproportionate gap into power profiles of core IP technologies, and more precisely focus on the estimation of the Internet energy consumption. This is a challenging task, first because of the widespread extent of the Internet, followed by the number of assumptions that are needed to define such a complex model. The reminder of this chapter is organized as follows. First, we overview different work focusing on the issue of measuring the power rating of either a single 20 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/chapter/power-profiling-internet-core/67315?camid=4v1 This title is available in e-Book Collection, E-Government e-Book Collection, Science, Engineering, and Information Technology e-Book Collection, Environmental, Agricultural, and Physical Sciences e-Book Collection, Advances in Environmental Engineering and Green Technologies, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, e-Book Collection Select, Computer Science and IT Knowledge Solutions e-Book Collection. 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