Impacts of energy efficiency features on lifetime of network equipment

Energy efficiency features are being integrated in network protocols and management systems in order to make the infrastructure more sustainable and, at the same time, address the growing users´ demand. Many of such features affect the network in different ways, thus yielding trade-offs. They can affect the reliability and availability of the network when they put devices or links into sleep mode, and they can affect the lifetime of the devices as a result of the new pattern of operation. This work discusses what needs to be evaluated when considering equipment lifetime, with respect to processor of network devices. We show that the new network management profile does affect the equipment lifetime negatively, in contradiction to what recent works seem to predict. We also present our ongoing research on how to calculate the trade-offs considering performance, availability, energy efficiency, and lifetime. These aspects must be taken into account in cost functions used to define the best network configuration. The key of our analysis and method relies on the understanding of thermal cycling and the power of using it in a predictive fashion.