A path-based traffic control method for green networks

With the power consumed by networks expected to increase rapidly due to significant growth forecast in traffic volumes, green networks that reduce CO₂ emissions are becoming increasingly important. Besides the energy-saving technologies currently under development for application to individual devices, technology that provides system-wide energy-savings for networks overall will be necessary to achieve green networks. In this paper, we propose a path-based traffic control method that achieves green networks by controlling the usage probability of pre-defined multiple paths to bring about a situation where some nodes can transition to sleep state when the traffic volume is small. The behavior and efficiency of the proposed method was evaluated using a simulation. From the simulation results, we confirm that the proposed method controls traffic in a timely and stable way in accordance with the variation in traffic, and saves energy during off peak times.