Standard Methodologies for Energy Efficiency Assessment

The increase of energy costs and the concern for the environmental impact are the two main causes for researching more efficient solutions to design the future Internet. Power management capabilities to be introduced in networking systems are under study, in order to reduce the carbon footprint due to the ICT industry without drastically affecting the service capabilities. In this respect, providing a correct evaluation of the trade-offs between power saving and performance degradation becomes crucial for a correct comparison of the power management capabilities. This chapter will introduce some of the most relevant contributions in the field of benchmarking methodologies, and it will discuss and compare their effectiveness in evaluating the energy efficiency of network devices and systems. Moreover, their accuracy will be investigated with the help of some test results presented at the end of the chapter.