Energy-efficient management and control in video distribution networks: "legacy" hardware based solutions and perspectives of virtualized networking environments

The chapter focuses in particular on energy-efficiency issues in the context of video distribution networks (VDNs), where additional paradigms, as content delivery and caching operations, play a relevant role. We first provide a short review on the current state and on energy-related aspects in VDNs; then, we focus on Local Control Policies / Network Control Policies in this context, and the possible role of the Green Abstraction Layer (GAL), a recent ETSI standard, to provide an abstract interface to convey energy efficiency related parameters to the management and control entities. In doing this, we consider both ‘traditional’ networking architectures based on specialized hardware, and the evolution towards virtualized infrastructures, where the GAL can still play a significant role, if suitably adapted to the specific environment.