Data Center Design

Greener PCs for

the Enterprise
Bruce Nordman, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory
Ken Christensen,
University of South Florida

PC energy use is a growing cost to enterprises, with most

machines remaining fully powered on, even while idle, for
most of the time. The Network Connectivity Proxy
maintains network presence for PCs but lets them sleep
while idle, thus saving energy and reducing total cost of
ownership.
greatest energy savings.

O ne ofnew
the tech-nologies
most urgent challenges of the 21st
that can transition
society with a reduced CO2
century
us to a moreis to engineer
sustainable
footprint. PC system units and monitors comprise 3 percent of the total
electricity consumed in the US, or roughly 100 TWh/year. At a rate of
$0.10 per kWh, the annual cost of this electricity is $10 billion. We all
know that electricity costs are a ma-jor factor in the cost of operating a data
center, but electricity costs are also significant for enterprise PCs.
Enterprise, or office, PC system units and monitors consume approximately
65 TWh/year, which is roughly 5 percent of commercial build-ing
electricity; residential systems consume just over 30 TWh/year.1 Figure 1
shows PC energy use (including monitors) in the larger context.1,2 PCs—
both in the enterprise and at home—often remain fully powered on, even
when inactive or idle. It’s during these idle periods that we can achieve the
 can remove this barrier to
PCs using an energy-
Being connected to the Internet requires some form of active participationsaving sleep mode when
—when hosts fail to respond, they “fall off the network,” and applica-tionsthey’re idle in one of two
fail. Consequently, network hosts consume billions of dollars worth ofways: by redesigning
electricity every year to stay fully powered on at all times for the solenetwork pro-tocols and
purpose of maintaining network connectivity or “presence.” In fact,applications or by
researchers have found that roughly 60 percent of office desktop PCs are encapsulating the
left on continuously.3 If not for the need for network connectivity, most ofintelligence for
these hosts could be asleep most of the time, with significant energy savings maintaining network
resulting. This need to maintain network con-nectivity also contributes topresence in an entity
why people disable existing power management features in many PCs. Weother than the operating
system and

28 IT Pro
July/August 2009 Publis
hed by the IEEE Computer Society 1520-
9202/09/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
 All electricity ~3,700 TWh

applications running in the system CPU. In our work, Building electricity ~2,700 TWh
we’ve pursued the second option via the Network
Connectivity Proxy (NCP), which is an entity that Electronics ~250 TWh
maintains full network presence for a sleeping network
host. This article describes how demands for constant All PCs ~100 TWh
network connectivity drive up PCs’ powered-on times
and how NCP technology can address both the need for
Enterprise PCs
net-work connectivity and the need to reduce energy
~65 TWh
consumed by PCs.

How PCs Use Energy

Energy is power consumed over time, so the time
dimension of electronics energy use is critical. For a PC,Figure 1. US energy usage in 2006. Although this illustration
idle power and time (when the machine’s on but not isn’t to scale, PC energy use (including monitors) represents
performing any user application function) are the most a sizeable chunk of the overall total.
important numbers to know (see the “PC Energy Use”
sidebar). Figure 2 shows the power a typical PCergy but usually does not reduce the total cost of
consumes. A new PC in sleep mode typically uses just 5 ownership (TCO). Nevertheless, changing both power
percent of idle power, and one that’s turned off a mere 3 levels and usage patterns will reduce PC energy use—
percent. Note that the difference between sleep and off isthe big question is the balance be-tween them. Power-
small, but the difference from either to idle is huge. Thelevel reductions have domi-nated past efforts, but the
peak power (when booting up or otherwise doing asmost potential savings (at least those that are cost-
much work as possible) can be 50 percent above the idleeffective on energy savings alone) come from changing
level, but this rarely occurs. Because most PC usageusage.
requires just a small part of the system’s total compute The usage in Figure 2 is an average of many desktop
capacity, the average on power is usually close to thePCs deployed in different ways, with the key variable
idle level. being their power state over night and during weekends
(three-fourths of the total hours in a week). Many
Two major changes can reduce overall PC en-ergy use desktop PCs remain on continu-ously, which leads to the
(and that of electronics generally): large annual idle time shown in the figure. Systems that
do sleep spend substantial time in that state, but most
• PC manufacturers can use more energy-efficientdon’t sleep at all, with some routinely powered down to
components—in particular, more energy-efficientoff. Many systems are left on over night and on week-
processors. This is most im-portant for idle because itends, thus most idle time occurs when no one is present
covers so much time, and the power levels are so—ideal times for the PC to be asleep. With this usage
much higher than sleep or off. pattern, universal use of sleep would cut PC energy use
by more than 50 percent.
0• Users can change their usage patterns. It’s well
worth investing in small increases in the sleep User confusion is one reason why PCs are left on
power level to leverage large shifts of time during times of nonuse. Some people believe that
from idle to sleep. “screensavers” save energy, but, in fact, the reverse is
true: they prevent display power man-agement and keep
In addition, the mix of devices can be changed as long as the CPU more active than it would be with a static
doing so doesn’t compromise the service needed. Indesktop screen. Other users observe the display going to
some computing environments, for example, thin clientssleep and as-sume that the whole system is powered
(plus a server) or notebooks can replace desktop PCs. down, even if the PC itself is still fully up. Finally, some
However, thin clients usually save the most costs inpeople don’t understand the device’s power modes or
terms of equip-ment purchase and management, withhow to assess them visually (see “The Power Control
modest energy savings; switching to notebooks saves en-User Interface” sidebar).

computer.org/ITPro 29
Data Center Design
generated from fossil
fuels, CO2—a
PC Energy greenhouse gas that
contributes to global
Use warming—is released into
the atmosphere. In the
US, 70 percent of
It’sunderstand
important to
how much
energy a PC uses and
electricity comes from
the possible impact of fossil fuels.2 The average
this energy use.
amount of CO2 released
What Is Power and per kWh is 0.7 kg; the
Energy? total CO2 entering the
Power is a measure of
atmosphere attributable to
instantaneous work, all PCs and monitors in
with electrical power the US is roughly 70
measured in watts million
(W). Energy is power metric tons per year. The
over time, measured US Environmental
in watt-hours (Wh). Protection Agency’s
One thousand Wh, or greenhouse gas
1 kWh, is the most equivalencies calculator
convenient (www.epa.gov/cleanenergy
measure of electricity /energy-
consumer use. The resources/calculator. html)
average cost of 1 kWh computes other
in the US is roughly equivalences.
$0.10; the average US
residence uses 10,700
kWh/year.

How Much Energy

Does
a Single Desktop PC
Use?
A typical existing
desktop PC system unit
uses roughly 80 W
when idle, and a typical
17-inch LCD display
uses roughly 35 W
when powered on.1
Thus, the cost to
operate a single 115-W
PC and monitor fully
powered on 24 hours a
day, seven days a
week, for one year is
roughly US$100 (this is
8,760 hours/ year x 115
W x $0.10/kWh). Active
energy (above the idle
level) contributes just a
few percent to a PC’s
annual total.

What Is the Climate

Impact of PCs?
When electricity is
 all modes than the typical
exist-ing PC—roughly 60
W while on, 2.5 W in
sleep, and 1.5 W while
H off.1 The energy used
o during this time could be
w saved if the PC were
instead asleep, with total
M energy savings for a
u single PC per year
equaling 400 kWh, or
c
$40. For a company with
h
10,000 such PCs, the
yearly savings would be
E roughly $400,000.
n
e What about non-PC
r Equipment?
g Other IT and consumer
y electronic devices as well
as set-top boxes, game
U consoles, printers,
s copiers, and so on are
e energy consumers, too.
d Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory has
b studied energy usage of
y of-fice equipment for 20
years and estimates that
P office PCs and monitors
C consume roughly 65
s TWh per year, with those
in residences adding
C approximately 30 TWh
o per year more.1
u
l References
d 1. M.C. Sanchez et
al., “Savings
B Estimates for the
e United States
Environmental
S Protection
a Agency’s
v ENERGY STAR
e Voluntary
d Product Labeling
Program,”
?
Energy Policy,
Researchers have
vol. 36 no. 6,
estimated that more
than half of the energy 2008, pp. 2098–
used by PCs occurs 2108.
when no one is 2. Energy
present. Figure 2 in the Information
main text shows that a Administration
typical business PC is , “Electric
idle most of the time.3 Power
New desktop PCs have Monthly,” US
lower power levels in Dept. Energy,
 2009; Equipment and
www.eia.do Inventory of
e.gov/ Miscellaneous
cneaf/electr Plug-Load
icity/epm/ta Equipment,
ble1_1.html tech. report
. LBNL-53729-
3. J. Roberson Revised,
et al., After- Lawrence
Hours Power Berkeley Nat’l
Status of Lab., 2004.
Office

Another reason for Finally, simple inertia is

systems to be left on isanother major reason for
long boot times (and thePCs being left on—that is,
loss of state whenpeople might have started
shutting down theleaving their PCs on all the
operating system),time and con-tinued to do
coupled with anso without reexamination,
ingrained aversion toeven as the reasons for the
using sleep. Per-haps theinitial habit have long
user had a badpassed.
experience with a sys-
tem that went to sleep The Need for
but didn’t reliably wake Network
up. Or, maybe this Connectivity
person doesn’t know Specific applications and
how to manually engage usage models drive the
sleep or set the system need for persistent
to automatically go to network connectivity, but
sleep. When the choice they rely on an
is between off (with a infrastructure of basic
slow boot) and leaving a network protocols to work.
ma-chine on A simple example of a
continuously, some needed basic function for
users will choose the off connectivity is the
option, but most will Address Resolution
simply leave the Protocol (ARP), which
machine on (see the associates an Ethernet or
“Off Is So Last Century” Wi-Fi hardware (or MAC)
sidebar). address

30 IT Pro July/August 2009

 w
at
ts
)
60
with the IP address of each PC and router port on a
subnet. Each PC (and router port) main-tains an ARP c
cache that contains the IP and MAC addresses for every o
PC on the subnet. In the router, the ARP cache refreshes n
s
by periodi-cally broadcasting ARP requests to all hosts u
on the subnet, but if a PC is sleeping, it can’t reply to m
such requests. This missing reply means that the entry pt
io
for the sleeping PC in the router table will be timed-out n 40
and removed, which has an extremely serious
consequence: the router can no longer forward packets
P
from outside the sub-net to the sleeping PC. Quite o
simply, the router no longer knows how to address w
packets to the nonresponding host. The router can’t even er 20
de-liver a special wake-up packet, so the sleeping PC le
ep
remains effectively unreachable to the rest of the world Off S
(outside its subnet). 0

0
PC states are off, sleep, H ours per year 8,760
On includes
Ac
tiv
e Figure 2. Enterprise PC usage patterns. A typical office
idle and active energy. computer consumes most of its energy when it’s doing
( Idle nothing useful, such as when idle.

The Power Control User Interface

ling the power status of electronics. These elements appear
on the outside of the product (typically, near switches), and
C
daily life, from telephone keypads to automobile controlsin software control panels and docu-mentation. Indicator
onsistent user interface elements are common
to media player play/pause/rewind controls. These
in
interface elements make products easier (and safer) tolights have color coding (green for on, yellow for sleep, and
use and typically cost no more than inconsis-
tent controls would. nothing for off). This standard clarifies that the basic power
In the past, many electronic devices used incon- modes for elec-tronics are on, sleep, and off, so that we can
sistent interface elements in power controls, result- look for-ward to a time when the inherently confusing word
ing in needless confusion about what power state a “standby” no longer appears in any user interface.
device was in or how power management could be For IT professionals, this makes communica-tion with
configured. users easier, but inevitably involves some reeducation
IEEE 1621 specifies user interface elements such and changing some user beliefs and expectations.
as symbols, indicator lights, and terms for control-

Off Is So Last Century

energy than those routinely powered off. This seems
counterintuitive, but the reduced time in idle from frequent

M
typically,any
PCspeople
might almost never
be asleep turn
most ofoff
thetheir
time,PCs;
use of sleep will account for much more savings than the
but energy required to be asleep rather than off.
only fully off for unusual travel or main-tenance
reasons. Moreover, modern PCs can wake quickly
(for example, Microsoft Vista specifies less than two This principle also extends to monitors, as many use
seconds out of the box), making the user
inconvenience (or “annoyance cost”) of using sleep virtually the same power in sleep mode or off, so the effort
mode low. used to manually turn them on and off would be better
Sleep does require more power than off, but since expended elsewhere. This is impor-tant to IT managers as
the difference is small (less than 2 watts for most they’ll need to educate their users to shift from off to sleep
recent PCs), the energy cost to shift from off to sleep as the primary low-power mode.
mode is small. Most sleeping systems use less total
computer.org/ITPro 31
 Data Center Design
bor
Traffic flow
solicitatio from/to
PC fully on n (NS) network
messages interface
controller
PC in sleep .
(NIC) only
0• Maintain
its IP
address
(1) Traffic flow by Internet
generatin
g
(4 ,5 ) (2) periodic

Figure 3. The SmartNIC with proxy capability. Red arrows show

transfer of state information between the PC’s operating system
and the proxy.

Dynamic
P ro xy in g
l operation o p eratio n Host
Control
Beyond ARP,
Protocol
many other (DHCP)
protocols must lease
also be requests.
considered. To 0• Maintain
maintain network its
connec-tivity, a managea
PC must be able bility by
to support several respondi
ap-plication and ng to
protocol Internet
primitives, Control
including the Message
following: Protocol
(ICMP)
packets,
0• For such as
IPv4, ping.
maintai 0• Support
n host- NetBIOS
level name
reachabi resolutio
lity by n by
respondi respond-
ng to ing to
periodic NetBIOS
ARP name
requests queries as
; for appropria
IPv6, te (if
maintai running
n NetBIOS
reachabi protocol
lity by and
respondi applicatio
ng to ns).
neigh- 0• Maintain
 applicati for
on-level service.
reachabi
lity by The last category
re- might include
spondin support for in-stant
g to messaging (IM)
TCP heartbeats, virtual
SYN private network
packets (VPN) tunnels,
sent to network address
open trans-lation (NAT)
(listenin mappings,
g) ports. universal plug and
0• Maintai play (UPnP)
n or discovery, Session
preserve Initiation Protocol
applicati
on state
(for ex-
ample,
current
user
workspa
ce and
data) for
any
applicati
ons with
open
long-
term
TCP
connecti
ons.

0• Maintai
n or
preserve
applicati
on state
by re-
spondin
g to any
number
of
applicati
on-level
message
s,
includin
g
heartbea
t
message
s and
specific
requests
 itself.

RIAs support both pull

and push of data via TCP
connections and
(SIP) potentially split state
requests, between a server and
Simple client. RIAs could have a
Network major impact on power
Man- management in desktop
agement PCs; research is still under
Protocol way to fully define
(SNMP) connectivity re-
requests, quirements for enterprise
Internet PCs. PCs on Wi-Fi net-
Group works must be able to
Managemen maintain association with
t Proto-colan access point (AP) by
(IGMP) using keep-alive mecha-
requests, IPnisms and executing key
security (IP-management protocols, as
sec) keyappropriate.
maintenance
, peer-to-
peer (P2P) The Network
queries, and Connectivity Proxy
many other The NCP is an entity that
ap-plication implements a network
and higher- host’s key presence
layer capabilities to let the PC
protocols. A sleep yet appear to other
broad range devices to be fully
of future operational and
applications connected. PCs connected
under the to the network maintain
rubric of their presence to other
rich Internet systems by cor-rectly
ap- generating and responding
plications to messages from both
(RIAs) network protocols and
might also applications. In other
have words, the PC sleeps
connectivity when it can and wakes up
requirement only when it needs to.
s. RIAs are Powered-down devices
Web-based require reliable and
applications standard wake-up to
in which the return to a fully powered
Web client state when needed.
executes the However, most network
user inter- messages destined for a
face, and system don’t require a
the back- device’s full resources,
end such as a desktop PC’s
application powerful (and power-
server hungry) processor and
executes the sig-nificant amounts of
application memory and storage. The
NCP can’t cover all
protocols and potentially support
applications, but saving energy-efficient operation
energy on most systems of many RIAs by
isn’t under-mined by a maintaining connec-tions
small percentage of PCs and possibly buffering
remaining on 24 hours a data to let the client host
day, seven days a week. sleep.
However, the NCP could

32 IT Pro July/August 2009

 sending packets when they aren’t acknowledged because
How Proxying Works applications and higher-layer protocols on IP networks
A proxy performs four basic functions: responding to assume some degree of unreli-ability. Thus,
routine requests, automatically generating rou-tineaccommodating the waking time is feasible for current
protocol messages, identifying when a wake up is truly applications and protocols.
warranted, and ignoring all other pack-ets. A network
connectivity proxy’s operation re-quires cooperationProxy Location
with the operating system and data from a few keyThe simplest place to put the proxy is within the network
applications. When the PC is awake, the proxy doesinterface controller (NIC), which greatly reduces
nothing: it only operates when the PC is asleep (a PC configuration problems, eases the passing of state
can enter sleep mode based on a predefined period of information, and might be essential for mobile devices.
user inactivity or by manual intervention, such as by However, an alter-
closing a note-book’s lid). The NCP covers for a
sleeping host, so it needs to know when the host’s power
state changes (going to sleep or waking) and be able to A proxy performs four basic functions:
transfer state between the host and the proxy.
Accordingly, the NCP’s key functional steps look like responding to routine requests,
this (see Figure 3): automatically generating routine protocol
1. The operating system determines that it’s time messages, identifying when a wake up is
to go to sleep.
truly warranted, and ignoring all other
2. The operating system passes state to the
proxy; the PC goes to sleep. packets.
3. The proxy maintains “full network connec-
tivity” (generating protocol and application
packets as needed). native is for the proxy to reside in the network device
4. The proxy determines when a packet requir-immediately adjacent to the sleeping PC. This is most
ing wake up has arrived; it then signals the PCcommonly a wiring closet first-level switch or router or
to wake up. a Wi-Fi AP. The PC’s operat-

5. The proxy waits for the PC to fully wake up; ing system would have to be proxy-capable, but the proxy passes
state back to the operating existing PCs could be proxied this way—the only system, and then the PC returns
to normal hardware requirement would be the existence of
network operation. a wake-on-LAN (WOL) capability—that is, the capability to
wake up a sleeping PC via a spe-cial network request. An
In addition, the PC might set a real-time-clock-wake additional requirement would be that the operating system and
event for periodic events that it can’t del-egate to theproxy subsystem both implement the same protocol for
proxy, or the system might wake up based on userpassing state back and forth.
activity.
When a device wakes up, it often experienc-es a delayWake-on-LAN
from when the wake-up signal oc-curs (whetherMost existing methods for PCs to wake on se-lected network
internally generated or from the network) and when thetraffic fall under the general WOL description (see the
system is fully ready to receive and respond to network“Reducing Energy Use with Power Management” sidebar). As
queries. For older PCs, this can be on the order of 10the list of protocols described earlier makes clear, proxy-ing
sec-onds or more—more modern ones can take just a involves a considerable amount of respond-ing to and sending
few seconds (in fact, Microsoft now specifies thatof packets rather than simply generating system wake ups,
Windows PCs running Vista will wake up in less than which is very differ-ent from WOL.
two seconds). The proxy can buffer the wake-up and
successive packets received and forward them once the Some organizations successfully use WOL to bring
PC is awake. Network protocols generally have machines to a fully on state prior to being
mechanisms to retry

computer.org/ITPro 33
Data Center Design

Reducing Energy Use with Power Management

including Verdiem, 1e, and
Researchers have addressed the
contribution of en-ergy use to the total
cost of PC ownership in the
BigFix, all of which market
enterprise since the mid 1990s to products that enable a single
varying degrees. So far, they’ve manager to globally control
identified three approaches to reducing the power management
settings of all the desktop
energy used by existing PCs through
PCs in a single enterprise
better use of power management.
(Energy Star provides a
Support for Remote Wake Up simpler version of this
capability for
The need to be able to wake up
free). Although global control
sleeping PCs remote-ly via a network
is feasible in some set-tings, it
interface has long been recognized and
generally referred to as wake-on-LAN isn’t as flexible or far-reaching
(WOL). In the 1990s, AMD and several as would be a fully distributed
other companies devel-oped the magic method of putting PCs not in
packet technology to do just this. A use to sleep.
magic packet-enabled PC has an
Programs for Tuning
Ethernet network interface controller
Power Management Settings
(NIC) that’s always powered on, even
Desktop PC operating systems,
when the rest of the PC is in a sleep
such as Microsoft Windows, let
state. The NIC is programmed to
users configure their own power
recognize a specially defined magic
man-agement settings, including
packet, and when it receives such a
the amount of idle time before a
packet, trigger an interrupt to wake up
PC goes to sleep. The default is
the PC. Magic packet has been
often 30 minutes, which means
extended to directed packet match, in
the PC remains idle for 30 min-
which specific protocol packets can
utes before going to sleep.
trigger a wake up.
Decreasing this time can
Global Control of Enterprise PC increase possible energy
States savings, and several programs
Several companies have recognized and tools can now let users
the business opportunity of saving configure these settings as a
energy, and thus money, in function of the time of day or
enterprises by controlling PC wake otherwise enable and disable
and sleep times, power management without
having to dig into arcane
configuration menus. Two such
programs are Verdiem’s Edison
application (www.verdiem.com/
edison/) and Google’s Energy
Saver gadget (http://
desktop.google.com/plugins/i/en
ergysaver.html).
wake up. An-other issue is that
WOL packets aren’t routable,
needed, but this is cumbersome in severalso the sending and receiving
re-spects. For manual updates, forsystems must be on the same
example, it adds an extra step to everysubnet. Ways around this
maintenance process; for automaticproblem exist, but they have
updates, sending a WOL packet musttheir own roadblocks—for
become part of the overall process andexample, it’s possible to run a
include a suitable delay for the system tospecial application on a single
PC in each subnet that can receive WOL
requests for that subnet and then relay a
WOL packet to the target system. Or thesettings that enable worthwhile
user or network administrator cansleep sacrifice too much
configure the system to wake up on afunctionality.
directed packet match rather than on just It’s widely recognized that
the magic packet, a specially definedWOL alone isn’t suf-ficient for
packet intended to wake up sleeping PCsachieving significant energy
via a network interface. However, in mostsavings in enterprise PCs. Some
computing environments, directed packettime ago, the Distributed
wake-up patterns do not allow energy-Management Task Force
savings settings that wake systems up (DMTF) Alert Standard Format
enough to maintain sufficient func-(ASF) standard specified a
tionality tend to make them wake up toofacility for a NIC to respond to
often to gain sufficient sleep time.ARP requests. More recently,
Similarly, those with Microsoft has described
features planned for its
Windows 7 release that offload
some response to network
traffic from the operating
system to the NIC—notably,
enhanced pattern matching for
wake up and support for ARP
in NICs. Intel recently
introduced a “remote wake”
capability in its motherboards
for SIP softphones that enables
PCs running a SIP softphone to
maintain con-nectivity with a
SIP server and wake upon
receiv-ing an incoming SIP call
request.

The NCP and Energy Star

The US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
approved the newest version of
the Energy Star specification
for computers in November
2008, which went into effect in
July 2009. The “En-

34 IT Pro July/August 2009

 maintain networking connectivity for sleep-

ergy Star Program Requirements for Computers, Version

5.0” specifically includes a provision for PCs thating hosts in the late 1990s, specifically for ARP in
support proxying (www.energystar.gov/ index.cfm?shared Ethernet networks.5 We refined this work in the
c=revisions.computer_spec): early 2000s and have further developed it in the past two
years.6–8 These and similar reports on proxying also
Full Network Connectivity: The ability of the
appear with the Energy Effi-cient Internet Project (at the
computer to maintain network presence while in sleep
University of South Florida and University of Florida,
and intelligently wake when further processing is
funded in part by the US National Science Foundation
required (including oc-casional processing required to and Cis-co Systems), which studies ways to improve the
maintain net-work presence). … From the vantage Internet’s energy efficiency by focusing on the most
point of the network, a sleeping computer with full basic yet often neglected energy consumers— edge
network connectivity is functionally equiva-lent to an devices. See www.csee.usf.edu/~christen/
idle computer with respect to com-mon applications energy/main.html for more information.
and usage models. Full network connectivity in sleep
is not limited to a specific set of protocols but can
cover ap-plications installed after initial installation. Ecma International—most famous
for standardizing JavaScript—is
Proxying PCs are assumed to spend consid-erably less hosting the effort to implement a
time in idle than their conventional counterparts, so the
evaluation criteria allow more flexibility in idle power.
standardized version 5.0 Energy
The EPA doesn’t define the specifics of full network Star proxying definition.
connectivity, but

[f]or a system to qualify under the proxying Researchers recently presented an initial explo-ration
weightings above, it must meet a non-pro-prietary of the architectural constructs required to support
proxying standard that has been ap-proved by the EPA selective connectivity at ACM HotNets 2007. Selective
and the European Union as meeting the goals of connectivity is the notion that a host can choose the
ENERGY STAR. degree to which it maintains a network presence, rather
than today’s binary “connected” or “disconnected”
Ecma International—most famous for stan-dardizingmodes. A key architectural construct to support selective
JavaScript—is hosting the effort to im-plement acon-nectivity is an assistant that stands in for a host
standardized version 5.0 Energy Star proxyingthat’s asleep.
definition. The Ecma TC32-TG21 com-mittee focuses
on “Proxying Support for Sleep Modes,” and has the In industry, proxying to enable power man-agement
participation of leading hardware, operating system, andalready exists for at least one specific protocol—UPnP,
PC OEM com-panies (www.ecma-which uses a fully distributed discovery protocol that
international.org/memento/ TC32-TG21.htm). Arequires all devices in a UPnP network to be fully
standard is expected in late 2009, with the expectation powered up at all times to respond to discovery
that the Energy Star program will then designate it asmessages. In Au-gust 2007, the UPnP Forum released its
meeting the program’s definition of “full networkUPnP low-power architecture, version 1.0 (www.upnp.
connectiv-ity” and so enable it to be used to qualify PCsorg/specs/lp.asp). To sleep and still be discover-able by
under the Energy Star label. For further infor-mation onUPnP control points, the architecture defines a power
proxying and related topics, see http://management proxy specific to UPnP only. However,
efficientnetworks.lbl.gov. proxying for UPnP isn’t transparent: it requires changes
to UPnP cli-ent functionality. This solution for enabling
power management in one specific protocol highlights
Other Work Related to Proxying the need for a more general—and transparent—
With our colleagues, we first explored proxying to approach. The DMTF Alert

computer.org/ITPro 35
Data Center Design
force
(http://ieee802.org/3/az),
with late 2010 as the
expected time frame for
the standard to receive all
Standard Format 2.0approvals. Unfortunately,
specification describesEEE-capable PCs won’t
proxying of ARP inachieve full energy
Ethernet NICs, and manysavings until the legacy
NICs currently installedwiring closet switches to
in PCs already support it.which they’re connected
In 2008, Microsoftare replaced or upgraded.
Research demonstrated a
prototype proxy called
Somniloquy, whereby a
secondary low-powerPractical Impacts
processor covers for theto the IT Manager
PC’s main processor.PCs with the hardware
Researchers developedand software infrastruc-
the prototype on a USB-ture for proxying (and the
based gumstix device; sosoftware for imple-
far, Somniloquy appearsmenting it on network
to be a general-purposeequipment) could become
ar-chitecture that canavailable in 2010. In the
also support networkmeantime, it’s important
appli-cations—including for IT professionals to
BitTorrent downloads—identify any usage mod-
via application stubs. els or applications that
proxying can’t support, so
Proxying will probablythat users and systems that
save the most PC energyrely on them are treated
use in coming years, butseparately from the bulk
other efforts will alsoof people who can use
help, including Energyproxying successfully for
Efficient Eth-ernet. EEEtheir comput-ing needs. IT
relies on the fact thatmanagers will need to
most Eth-ernet linksensure that standard disk
have very low utilizationimages have power
most of the time (inmanagement enabled and
terms of actual datacome up with a way to
transmitted as adescribe proxying to
percentage of linkordinary users so that they
capacity). When bothunder-stand how to use
ends of a link are EEE-sleep mode correctly.
capable, the physical-
layer power is greatly As we’ve mentioned,
reduced under normalproxying attempts to hide
operating conditions,the fact that the PC is
saving a watt or more ofasleep from the rest of the
power for 1 Gb/s linksnetwork, which is the best
on PCs (and many timescourse of action
that for those running at
10 Gb/s in data centers
and network equipment).
The IEEE is
standardizing this
through its 802.3az task
 PCs used in server roles
(in which frequent,
constant access is
expected, and response
time performance is a
most of the time.critical mea-sure). We
However, selectenvision proxying as
applications might wantbeing applicable and
to disclose the PC’suseful to the vast majority
power state to specificof enterprise (and home)
parts of the network toPCs, but not to critical
ensure that they canservers in a data center.
make the best resourceOnce the proxying
allocation decisions. Onestandard is in place, then
of us (Christensen, withnew protocols and
his student Fran-ciscoapplications can be de-
Blanquicet) has proposedsigned so as to not
a power MIB for SNMP“break” when the proxy
to disclose power stateen-gages, and thus be
and other energy-relatedcompatible with PCs
information. Power-routinely going through
aware applications cansleep cycles at night and
use this information toduring the work day.
make decisions that
respect users’ desire to
save energy yet take into
account system latency
for full wake up. P2P and
other emerging ings
F
desktop PC,orthea typical
power new
sav-
from shifting from idle
enterprise applications For a PC that stays on W.
to sleep is just under 60
24
particu-larly need to be week hours a day, seven days a
without proxying—
power-aware because but
that can sleep for three-
they can have the
fourths with it—annual
unintended effect of
savings amount to roughly
requiring systems to stay
400 kWh, or US$40 at
awake when for all other
$0.10/kWh (per PC).
purposes they don’t need
Although the most
to be.
immediate energy savings
will be in desktops,
A key design goal of
proxying technology ap-
proxying is that it be
plies equally to notebooks
invis-ible to applications
and printers. While
and users. As such, we
printers can and do go to
don’t believe that its
sleep (principally by
deployment will require
powering down their fuser
much in-tervention from
unit and imaging
IT managers or staff. It’s
electronics), the processor
doubt-ful that 100
that handles network
percent of all future PCs
connectivity must stay
will operate with
fully on. Nevertheless,
proxying enabled; there
proxying could still
will always be ex-
notably reduce the power
ceptions, such as those

36 IT Pro July/August 2009

levels required in sleep. In the home context, game 4. Energy Information Administration, “Electric Power
consoles and set-top boxes could also make good use of Monthly,” US Dept. Energy, 2009; www.eia.doe.gov/
proxying technology. Even devices such as phones, TVs, cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html.
and other displays could use proxying as they 5. K. Christensen and F. Gulledge, “Enabling Power
increasingly use In-ternet connections. Ultimately, we’ll Management for Network-Attached Computers,” Int’l
need to reduce the energy consumption of all the elec- J. Network Management, vol. 8, no. 2, 1998, pp. 120–
tronic devices we use, and proxying is a rela-tively easy 130.
and low-cost way to do it. 6. K. Christensen et al., “The Next Frontier for Commu-
nications Networks: Power Management,” Computer
Communications, vol. 27, no. 18, 2004, pp. 1758–
Acknowledgments 1770.
This material is based on work supported by the California Ener-gy 7. B. Nordman and K. Christensen, “Improving the
Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research program and the US Energy Efficiency of Ethernet-Connected Devices: A
Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC-02-05CH11231 Proposal for Proxying,” white paper, version 1.0, Eth-
(Nordman), and the US National Science Founda-tion under grant ernet Alliance, Oct. 2007.
number CNS-0520081 (Christensen). 8. M. Jimeno, K. Christensen, and B. Nordman, “A
Network Connection Proxy to Enable Hosts to Sleep
References and Save Energy,” Proc. IEEE Int’l Performance
1. M.C. Sanchez et al., “Savings Estimates for the United Comput-ing and Communications Conf., IEEE CS
States Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY Press, 2008, pp. 101–110.
STAR Voluntary Product Labeling Program,” Energy
Policy, vol. 36, no. 6, 2008, pp. 2098–2108.
2. Energy Information Administration, “Electric Power
Monthly,” US Dept. Energy, 2009; www.eia.doe.gov/ Bruce Nordman is a staff research associate in the Energy
cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_1.html. Analysis Department, Environmental Energy Technologies
3. J. Roberson et al., After-Hours Power Status of Of-fice Division, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Con-
Equipment and Inventory of Miscellaneous Plug-Load tact him at [email protected].
Equipment, tech. report LBNL-53729-Revised, Law-
rence Berkeley Nat’l Lab., 2004.
Ken Christensen is a professor in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering at the University of
South Florida. Contact him at [email protected].

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