White Paper Abstract:
Rising energy costs and increasingly rigid environmental standards work in tandem to draw attention to the “energy footprint” aspect of data networking. Governments and corporations around the world are tightening energy and emission budgets, thus creating demand for new, energy-aware generations of telecom equipment.
In response, telecom vendors are starting to label their offerings as “green” and “environment-friendly.”
But one important detail about this theme is often missing: verifiable data to support these “green” marketing claims.
This paper aims to fill the resulting gap by discussing the practical aspects of achieving and objectively
measuring energy efficiency in the telecom world. As the first step, we define an efficiency metric that supports informed decisions related to network equipment energy consumption. In the remainder of the document, new criteria are used to define the best energy practices and the practical aspects of energy efficiency for the networking industry.