Lifetime-aware networks: It is not what you know but who you know

In this paper, we investigate the problem of managing the lifetime in backbone networks by imposing sleep mode (SM) states to network devices. When a device enters a SM, its lifetime is increased. However, the transition between SM and full power tends to reduce the lifetime. We study this tradeoff by evaluating an energy-aware algorithm which manages the link power states in backbone networks. More in-depth, we exploit the different topologies and different time granularities for applying the SM decisions, showing that both aspects impact on the network lifetime performance. In particular, the network lifetime is not merely a function of hardware failure rate and SMs parameters, but it is also a network-wide activity that has to be carefully managed. The extensive simulation studies have confirmed that the underlying topological characteristic is one of the sensitive factors significantly impacting the network lifetime.