Network Energy Efficiency in the Data Center

Data center energy-use has been a leading topic in computing for more than a decade. In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted a study to understand data center energy-use trends and recommended a systems-wide approach to achieving energy efficiency. In the same year the IEEE began work on Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE), which completed in 2010, producing another tool in the energy-efficiency solution set. While IEEE 802.3az (TM)-2010 specifies EEE for twisted-pair copper and backplane interface, this paper examines the motivation for energy-efficient networking in data centers, the role Energy-Efficient Ethernet could have in making the data center network energy-proportional, and how EEE combined with optical networks may optimize network energy-use.