GRiDA: GReen Distributed Algorithm for energy-efficient IP backbone networks

In this work, we face the problem of reducing the power consumption of Internet backbone networks. We propose a novel algorithm, called GRiDA, to selectively switch off links in an Internet Service Provider IP-based network to reduce the system energy consumption. Differently from approaches that have been proposed in the literature, our solution is completely distributed and thus not requiring any centralized oracle. It leverages link-state protocol like OSPF to share a limited amount of information, and to reduce the problem complexity. Another key feature of GRiDA is that it does not require the knowledge of the actual and past/future traffic matrices, being able to run in real-time, where this information would not be available. Results, obtained on realistic case studies, show that GRiDA achieves performance comparable to several existing centralized algorithms, guaranteeing energy savings up to 50%. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.