FOCUS NETWORKING UPDATE
Issue 11, Aug/Sept
EXTRA WATTS EMERGES As Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) ratification nears, technology developments and testing are in full swing
vendors, are leaving no stone unturned. One of the newest frontiers in the struggle with wasted electrons is networking equipment. An epicenter for this battle is the development of a common protocol that allows for power savings in the physical layer.
A
In June, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) announced the availability of testing facilities for the emerging Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard. EEE, currently under development by an international (IEEE) taskforce, enables power savings in networks and has generated a great deal of interest across the board – from silicon vendors to OEMs and end-users.
The UNH-IOL provides third-party testing facilities for developing technologies. The facility is used by about 200 companies to test new protocols and products for multivendor interoperability and standard compliance. The industry-funded lab is split into groups, each focusing on a different technological area.
The aim is to offer early testing as new standards are being developed so that products that comply with these standards are ready for market as soon as the standards are ratified.
LEVERAGING LOW-LINK UTILIZATION
New testing capabilities announced in late June are for technologies that implement the IEEE P802.3az protocol. Also known as EEE, it is targeted for ratification in September 2010.
The idea of EEE is to leverage periods of low- link utilization in networks by powering links down when they are idle and quickly turning them back on when they are needed to transmit data. According to a white paper written by Wael Diab, technical director at Broadcom, a maker of semiconductors for communication equipment, a typical server and/or client Ethernet link is idle most of the time, with
40
www.datacenterdynamics.com
s energy efficiency moves further up the list of priorities for data center operators, industry stakeholders, from end-users to
A NEW NETWORK STANDARD FOR FINDING
product portfolio. According to Diab, the company is moving to integrate energy footprint into the traditional cost-per- performance metrics for its products.
Broadcom’s OEMs have shown a high level of interest in making their equipment compliant with the future standard. Energy-efficiency figures a lot in conversations with end users in data centers, enterprises, as well as home and access networks.
Jeff Lapac, senior engineer at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory
occasional traffic bursts. Diab, who has been involved in the standard’s development, said: “You can save energy on the physical layer interfaces that are defined.”
The interfaces (PHYs) currently selected for the EEE specification are 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T and the emerging 10GBASE-T, Diab writes in a white paper. The current plan is to use a method called Low Power Idle to enable energy savings in these PHYs. The method allows for a quick transition back to an active state for high-performance data transmission from a powered-down state.
BEYOND THE PHY
“Because the physical layer goes to sleep, you can turn off additional subsystems that are on top of it,” Diab said. With the existing physical layer, which is constantly active, it is impossible to turn off any devices above it because of the need to anticipate that a packet will need to be transmitted.
Once the system knows that a link in the communications layer has gone to sleep, additional components above can be powered down. “The opportunities for savings are not only in the components that deal with the communication part but also in subsystems in the box that are above the networking interface,” Diab said.
Broadcom has integrated the future standard into its strategy across the wired Ethernet
The supplier calls its strategy energy efficient networking, building upon the standard requirements by “adding control policy, hardware and software subsystems in a standards-friendly way”. The goal is to enable end-to-end energy efficiency in networks.
Broadcom is not alone in its embrace of EEE. Jeff Lapac, senior engineer at UNH-IOL, said all the major PHY manufacturers are developing solutions that comply with the future EEE protocol.
The protocol is not set up, however, for 24-7 use, Lapac said. “It depends on how the data center is set up. If the data center is fully loaded the entire time it will not be the best application of EEE technology. In many data centers, however, there are low-usage periods – that is when EEE can bring savings,” Lapac said.
In a low-power state, a device’s energy consumption can be reduced by 80%, Lapac said. And these are just savings in the network layer. Echoing Diab, Lapac said that even bigger savings opportunities in data centers occurs when EEE functionality is leveraged by other devices, namely servers, to switch to low- power modes when idle and back.
The emerging standard may gain even more weight from interest by US regulators. According to Lapac, the group within the US Environmental Protection Agency that is developing the Energy Star rating system for servers is considering making EEE compliance a mandatory component of the rating.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64