SDN-enabled energy-efficient network management

The continuing increase in demand for online and cloud services as well as the development of new more resource-intensive applications poses a significant challenge to the network infrastructure. The resulting rise in energy costs and ecological considerations have made it apparent that a future network infrastructure needs to be as energy efficient as possible, while at the same time flexible enough to handle the ever-changing traffic demands it is exposed to. This requires a flexible adaption of resources in the network devices themselves – the power management primitives – as well as a network-wide optimization of traffic loads. Software defined networking provides a way to introduce this flexibility into the network. This chapter illustrates how both approaches can be integrated to form an energy-efficient network management system.