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Category: Green Tech Author : Steven Hodson Posted: January 23, 2009
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The Internet is using more power but doing it better


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As the Internet grows and more and more people are using it to watch videos or play their music and store their data it is inevitable that its overall energy usage would also climb. With numbers like 3.2 million people climbed on board the Internet train between 2000 and 2006 its not surprising to hear that its energy usage doubled.

That might sound like a lot but when you stop to think about it that doubling of energy usage is more of testament of a growing energy consciousness in the companies that manufacture the equipment used to power the Internet. Katie Fehrenbacher over at earth2tech.com pointed this out today in a post

But take a closer look at the numbers and we can see the Internet is actually getting more energy efficient. According to data from Jonathan Koomey, scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, while Internet energy use doubled from 2000 to 2006, Internet traffic has far more than doubled during that period, and has ramped up by a factor of 20 to the 5th (or 3.2 million). The reason for the discrepancy is because network technologies have gotten consistently more energy efficient per unit of data transferred over the Internet.

She also pointed out that Cisco has been trying to make its hardware more energy efficient for some time. In that effort Cisco is one of the first companies to have its switches labelled as Certified Green by the consultancy firm Miercom. One has to wonder though as we move closer to the huge data centers meant to power the Internet cloud whether that energy/user ratio will stay the same.











Comments


One Archived Response to “ The Internet is using more power but doing it better ”

  1. download free ringtones
    Jan 23, 2009

    well in tihs day and age, with energy efficient blubs, major and minor appliances, why shouldn't the interenet be the same. I think its amazing that big corporations are FINALLY taking the time and spending the resources to be energy compliant. We can talk about energy independece till the cows come home, but the only way we would really be self reliant is by investing the necessary resources in the most required R&D of energy efficient products. We really need to be making these products @ home and not outsourcing it to China or other countries. Really what we need to do is buy AMERICAN. There was a day when China had to beg for money from US and now we OWE them. How long can we sustain our economy and our standard of living if we just keep on shipping out jobs to other countries and become a 100% Consumer nation, which unfortunately, for most parts, we already have become!