A new optimization algorithm for power saving in backbone networks

Minimizing power consumption in the area of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is becoming a hot topic. In computer networks, traffic measurements have indicated that the network utilization may become very low (less than 10%) during non-peak hours, which provides the opportunity to power off some routers and links in a network to conserve energy consumption without causing network performance deterioration. This paper formulates an optimization problem for power saving in backbone networks during non-peak hours and proposes a heuristic algorithm for the optimization problem. The performance investigation shows that the proposed heuristic can save up to 50% more power than a popular power saving algorithm for backbone networks.