Network energy efficiency gains through coordinated cross-layer aggregation and bypass

With the continuous growth of traffic in Internet Protocol (IP) networks, the issue of energy consumption in these networks has been growing in importance. “Next-generation networks” have been predicted as having a potential to reduce energy consumption of packet switched IP networks; however, these predictions have generally not been quantified. This paper provides a demonstration of how these energy savings could be achieved, through architectures including the appropriate application of both circuit switching and packet switching network layers. In this paper, we show that energy savings of around 70% could be achieved through a coordinated cross-layer aggregation and bypass process which can be conveniently implemented by network technologies such as automatically switched optical networks, and generalized multi-protocol label switching, compared to a network using full IP routing at each node.