Saving Energy in LAN Switches: New Methods of Packet Coalescing for Energy Efficient Ethernet

Small Or Home Office (SOHO) Ethernet LAN switches consume about 8 TWh per year in the U.S. alone. Despite normally low traffic load and numerous periods of idleness, these switches typically stay fully powered-on at all times. With the standardization of Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), Ethernet interfaces can be put into a Low Power Idle (LPI) mode during idle periods when there are no packets to transmit. This paper proposes and evaluates a new EEE policy of synchronous coalescing of packets in network hosts and edge routers.