Energy Efficient Ethernet in practice

This paper presents a field study investigating the usage, configuration changes regarding end-devices, power consumption and bandwidth usage of the campus-wide local network, including observations of negotiated link speeds and fluctuations of our clients. On this basis, the publication includes a first model of a usage-driven optimization by switch-side bandwidth throttling. In our approach we examine the network usage, prognose a future link usage of the switch interface and force the link to a lower speed and power consumption when possible. The problem of felt degraded service quality by link loss while re-negotiation is tolerated.