The new GREEN working group gets ready for an energy efficient Internet

Improving the energy efficiency of communication systems is highly sought after for environmental, business, and technical reasons yet no standards exist to accomplish this in heterogeneous networks. Network operators would like to have better tools for understanding and managing the energy consumption of components, devices, and services across their networks along with the evolution of usage patterns.. Operating an energy-efficient network over the long haul means deploying and managing updates to network infrastructures and functions to optimize energy use while achieving the network’s functional and performance requirements.  

For example, one desired outcome of the GREEN working group is to allow operators to combine knowledge of device and component power consumption with network wide traffic flow and behavioral knowledge to tune components of network devices to reduce power usage of individual devices, hence reducing overall power usage of the entire network.

The GREEN working group will initially focus on the following deliverables:

• An Informational document that (1) defines common terminology and metric definitions, (2) categorizes various types of metrics and measurements at component, device, and network levels.
• Standard Track definitions of YANG data models at the component level, device level, and network level for energy efficiency network management including energy usage monitoring and energy consumption management.
• An Informational document that (1) defines a set of architectural components for managing Energy Efficient Networks and (2) describes incremental deployment considerations for new energy efficiency metrics monitoring and capability discovery, and management within a network domain.

The GREEN working group will seek guidance covering the incremental deployment of energy-efficient features in both network devices and the management of energy-efficient networks. The working group will collaborate with other working groups that address topics related to power consumption observability and energy efficiency management, such as IVY, OPSAWG, and NETMOD. It will also work and liaise with other stakeholders such as industry associations and other standards development organizations (SDOs).

For full details and background, see the GREEN working group page on the IETF Datatracker. To join the discussion, sign up for the working group mailing list. And, if you’d like to join the first working meeting, register for the upcoming IETF 121 Dublin meeting, 2-8 November, and participate in-person or remotely. The GREEN session will be held at 9:30 UTC on 4 November, with a view-only livestream available from the IETF Live webpage.