Power-efficient multi-layer networking: design and evaluation

With the exponential growth in the amount of Internet traffic, power consumption in the networking field has become a paramount issue. This paper focuses on the design of power-efficient multi-layer networks that comprise both the optical layer and the Internet Protocol (IP) layer, and analyzes several approaches such as power-efficient routing of lightpaths and power-efficient configuration of network devices. Based on practical network equipment and network architecture, this paper proposes a set of complete mathematical formulations to model comparatively complicated multi-layer networks, and utilizes Integer Linear Programming (ILP) to investigate the power-conservation effect through optimization. Simulation results indicate that significant power can be conserved with the power-efficient network design.