Reducing Power Consumption using BGP
draft-mjsraman-rtgwg-inter-as-psp-06

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a framework to reduce the aggregate power consumption of the Internet using a collaborative approach between Autonomous Systems (AS). We identify the low-power paths among the AS and then use Traffic Engineering (TE) techniques to route the packets along the paths. Such low-power paths can be identified by using the consumed-power-to-available-bandwidth (PWR) ratio as an additional constraint in the Constrained Shortest Path First (CSPF) algorithm. For re-routing the data traffic through these low-power paths, the Inter-AS Traffic Engineered Label Switched Path (TE-LSP) that spans multiple AS can be used. Extensions to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) can be used to disseminate the PWR ratio metric among the AS thereby creating a collaborative approach to reduce the power consumption. Since calculating the low-power paths can be computationally intensive, a graph-labeling heuristic is also proposed. This heuristic reduces the computational complexity but may provide a sub-optimal low-power path. The feasibility of our approaches is illustrated by applying our algorithm to a subset of the Internet. The techniques proposed in this paper for the Inter-AS power reduction require minimal modifications to the existing features of the Internet. The proposed techniques can be extended to other levels of Internet hierarchy, such as Intra-AS paths, through suitable modifications.

Authors

Shankar Raman
Balaji Venkat Venkataswami
Gaurav Raina

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)