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Escalating power consumption could hobble internet

Tony Chan | December 6, 2008 | 0 Comments

By Petroc Wilton, CommsDay

New research has warned that increasing demands for broadband capacity will lead to surging energy requirements, threatening to choke internet speeds. The internet power consumption model developed by the University of Melbourne also suggested that the situation can be averted – but only if industry and governments begin to act now.

Presented at the university’s ‘Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT’, the research indicated that the power demands of the internet will grow from 0.5% of today’s national consumption to 1% by 2020.

Though an apparently small increase, Dr. Kerry Hinton of the university’s department of electrical and electronic engineering explained that the concentration of the power use across a limited number of facilities could make the problem serious.

“There already have been cases where power supply companies have refused to connect up new data centres, because their grid can’t cope,” Dr. Hinton told CommsDay. “If we don’t address the question of energy efficiency, then we could be in a bit of strife, because what will happen is the power for the equipment that we need can’t be put out there. So the core of the internet begins to slow down.”

Dr. Hinton suggested a number of techniques to improve efficiencies, including building ‘sleep mode’ functionality into domestic modems and using bypass technologies to reduce the number of routers used for connections.

“If we plan ahead…. to make the heart of the internet more power-efficient, then we’re fairly confident we could actually avoid this scenario,” he said.

As for the business case, Dr. Hinton said that rising power costs coupled with emissions trading schemes could soon drive corporate interest. “Any ICT company that wants to keep its head above the water now needs to seriously think about its running costs and power consumption,” he said. “And the carbon tax will just make that a stronger issue.”