Networking Energy Efficient Future Green Internet

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Green computing is the environmentally responsible use of computers and related resources. Such practices include the implementation of energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals as well as reduced resource consumption and proper disposal of electronic waste (e-waste).

Green Internet computing can be achieved by promoting the development of a sustainable, "green" Future Internet, able to answer to societal and environmental needs and by developing a holistic, innovation-centric perspective on the development of Future Internet technologies.

Within the framework of "Green Communication", a number of paradigm-shifting technical approaches can be expected, including but not limited to energy-efficient network architecture & protocols, energy- efficient wireless transmission techniques, cross-layers optimization methods, and opportunistic spectrum sharing without causing harmful interference pollution

For further knowing about the whole process we must discuss the following points:

Power Consumption/Energy Efficiency in the Internet

Dynamic Adaption

Smart Sleeping

Leveraging new Technologies

Improved Data Centres and Equipment devices

Introduction

Green computing, the study and practice of efficient and eco-friendly computing resources, is now under the attention of not only environmental organizations, but also businesses from other industries. In recent years, companies in the computer industry have come to realize that going green is in their best interest, both in terms of public relations and reduced costs. 

As 21st century belongs to computers, gizmos and electronic items, energy issues will get a serious ring in the coming days, as the public debate on carbon emissions, global warming and climate change gets hotter. If we think computers are non polluting and consume very little energy we need to think again. It is estimated that out of $250 billion per year spent on powering computers worldwide only about 15% of that power is spent computing- the rest is wasted idling. Thus, energy saved on computer hardware and computing will equate tonnes of carbon emissions saved per year.

2. Problems

Performance-wise, computer design has progressed staggeringly well and astonishingly fast but looking at it from a green perspective, the work is at its epoch. It takes a lot of energy to create, package, store, and move.  Usually, computers can contain 4 to 8 pounds of lead alone, according to green experts. It’s no wonder that computers and other electronics make up two-fifths of all lead in landfills which means a method of solid waste disposal. To stop this growing pollution threat all over the world due to the growing use of electronic device in general and computers in particular all over world there is a need to look for an eco-friendly computer

2.1 Carbon Free Computing

To reduce the "carbon footprint" of users, the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide (CO2). Greenhouse gases naturally blanket the Earth and are responsible for its more or less stable temperature. An increase in the concentration of the main greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons — is believed to be responsible for Earth's increasing temperature, which could lead to severe floods and droughts, rising sea levels, and other environmental effects, affecting both life and the world's economy.

Under an initiative VIA offers a line of PC products certified as Carbon Free. VIA works with environmental experts to calculate the electricity used by an average Carbon Free Computing product over its lifetime. Then from the amount of electricity used, VIA calculates how much carbon dioxide emissions will be released into the environment mainly as a result of fossil fuel burning power plants, and then works with regional offset organizations to "offset" that amount of carbon dioxide through projects such as reforestation, investments in alternative energy, and Energy conservation.

2.2 Temperature

To keep servers at the right temperature, companies mainly rely on air-conditioning equipments. The more powerful the machine, the more cool air needed to keep it from overheating. By 2005, the energy required to power and cool servers accounted for about 1.2% of total U.S. electricity consumption, according to a report released in February by staff scientist Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and sponsored by chip manufacturer AMD (AMD). According to Gartner by 2010, about half of the Forbes Global 2000 companies will spend more on energy than on hardware such as servers. Energy costs, now about 10% of the average IT budget, could rise to 50% in a matter of years, Kumar says. Faster processors use more power, because they use too much power and their waste heat increases temperature for which air conditioning necessary, especially in server farms--between the computers and the HVAC. The waste heat also causes reliability problems, as CPU's crash much more often at higher temperatures.

3. Software Optimization

The adverse effects on the global environment can be altered by changing the working habits of different technical users and managers. We can take following steps:

Virtualisation: Virtualization is an extremely effective tool for more cost-effective, and energy efficient computing mechanism where each server is divided into multiple virtual machines which runs on different applications and by that, various companies can increase their server utilization rates.

Resource Allocation: Different types of algorithms can also be used to route data to data centres where electricity is less expensive. An energy allocation algorithm has been tested by researchers that successfully routes traffic to the location where we can find cheapest energy cost. The researchers proposed that up to 40 percent savings on energy costs can be achieved, if their proposed algorithm were to be deployed. Strictly speaking, this approach does not actually reduce the amount of energy being used; but it only reduces the cost to the company using it. However, a similar strategy like this could be used to direct traffic which relies on energy that is produced in a more environmental friendly or reliable way. The same kind of approach has also been used to cut energy usage by routing traffic away from data centres that experiences warm weather which allows computers to be shut down in order to avoid using air conditioning.

Power Options: Setting the Power Options of computer to switch to sleep mode when it’s not active is a good practice. We can find the power options settings in PC’s Control Panel. It enables PC’s to go to stand-by mode and turn off the monitor when the PC is idle for a few minutes.

Energy efficient display options include:

No video card or the usage of shared terminal, shared thin client, or desktop sharing software if display is required.

Use motherboard video output – which is typically used to provide low 3D performance and low power consumption.

Reuse of older video cards that uses little power; many of which do not require heat sinks or fans.

4. Ways Out: We can deploy many ways to optimize our power consumption at different levels, which can include:

Starting at Home – Level 0

Level 0 ("Local") in the mechanism for virtualization maturity model, which means that we should focus on no virtualization at all! Even with no virtualization, we can have plenty of scope for energy savings. Traditional design and development methods may lead to applications that are less efficient than they could be. Some other types of design issues can also arise that can be readily recognized in various applications, with a specified set of rules or mechanism that can be recommended to be implemented by architects and developers , as a standard for all types of applications.

Enable power saving mode: For the majority of time, many computers remain in the idle mode and theoretically can be turned off when comes in an idle mode. This can result in generating enormous amount of energy savings. Nevertheless, this has some implication issues for application’s design, as applications designers need to consider the platform (client and/or server) with the methodology of going to sleep and waking up time after time. For example, if a client or server goes to sleep while an application user session is still active, what are the session timeout implications and policies when the platform wakes up?

Principle: we should always design for transparent sleep/wake mode.

Examples that all applications should inculcate to achieve power-saving includes:

• Any application should not force computer to go into the sleep mode.

• An application should be executed successfully when the computer leaves the sleep mode.

• An applications should not unnecessary hold the network.

5. Awareness Programs

We can include following major issues for the awareness programs:

Green computing minimizes the energy consumption of the organization i.e. it results in minimizing the resulted power bill.

Use of various types of non-toxic materials to construct different equipments makes the worker safe from health problem and occupational hazards.

It can also results in saving the resources of a country.

In the long term, these proposed green equipments will be less costly without any hidden cost of waste and enhanced resource consumption without any detrimental effect of accuracy, performance and longevity.

6. Conclusion

So far, consumers haven’t cared about ecological impact when they decide to buy computers; instead they have cared only about its speed, price and specifications. Now time has come to think about our ecology, since a consumer should become more aware about being green. All the devices that use less power should be recommended and usage of renewable energy should be encouraged as its utilization gets more and more portable and effective over the time.