How the Internet's energy efficiency will increase 1000 fold

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 29 September 2011 10:05

Business IT - Technology

The GreenTouch Consortium - a global research initiative dedicated to dramatically improving the energy efficiency of information and communications technology networks by a factor of 1,000 - says it will reveal a comprehensive roadmap at an Open Forum on 17 November in conjunction with its members meeting, in Seattle.

The consortium was formed last year and now claims 300 participants from 50+ member organisations in 19 countries that are "working together to define the challenges, identify the trends and issues and develop solutions that will achieve the goal of delivering within five years the architecture, specifications, roadmap and demonstrations of key components needed to increase the energy efficiency of ICT networks '’ in particular, the service provider networks that make up the Internet '’ by a factor of 1,000 from current levels."

Australia is heavily involved in the organisation. Australian members include, NICTA, The University of Melbourne's IBES and the University of NSW. In particular, the Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) established last year by the University of Melbourne in conjunction with Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs is well represented in GreenTouch.

Its director, Rod Tucker, is a member of the GreenTouch board; principal research fellow, Kerry Hinton, chairs its networks committee and deputy director Bill Shieh chairs the core transmission and optical networks working groups. Also, a number of CEET researchers are members of GreenTouch committees and working groups.