Re: [E-impact] Metrics for E-Impact and Sustainability -- Summary and Next Steps

[Rudolf van der Berg <[e-mail]>]

Thanks!! This is awesome. It is also way past my bed time, so I will
respond later. I do see I wrote traffic lights, where I meant street
lighting! That said it is about their energy use, which certainly for most
street lights is not proportional to traffic and likely not much either for
traffic lights, though maybe with some demand response systems it might
affect the distribution of red, green and orange and their number.

When it comes to cat videos, given that they form much of what some family
members communicat(e) some people lack an understanding of utility
functions, cats trump IAB any day of the week. It is not up to us to
clarify bits. It is my ISPs job to push them and respect my privacy and net
neutrality and certainly not to assume what is valuable. If your net worth
beats Grumpy Cat or Taylor Swift's cat than maybe what you do may be more
valuable than cat videos. So no the point of the Internet is not to push
bits. It is to interconnect. To be connected. The amount of bits and how
they are pushed is not relevant for the value of being connected. a PSTN
line was powered 24/7 for good reason. So is my parents FTTH or my FTTH.

So yes relating these to desired effect is to relate them to being
connected. What the bits are and do and your opinion of the context of the
bits is irrelevant (and should you actually peek in the packets, a criminal
offense) So if you look for a metric relative to something, try per user or
port.

With regards to there being absolutely no correlation between bita
transferred and energy consumption, you caught me, I was using a style
figur, known as a hyperbole. I had hoped that someone, maybe at a router
manufacturer (Juniper, Nokia, Arista etc.) would actually show real data on
how power use of a router varies under load in real life situations. I used
to use this Cisco report that said energy use under load vs idle was at
most 20W, which was 1% for A 6509 with 150 ports, but it is old and it may
just not be the case anymore.
  Cisco 6509 energy.pdf
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1isfRXxVnXdZycyMx2-slubPbMutsqBYc/view?usp=drivesdk>
But pls point me to resources that have better data. The blog you point to
doesn't provide data. I can't see what relative effects are and how this is
affected by traffic shifted over a day, peak levels and duration of use,
traffic load, number of users, outside temperature, humidity or geographic
spread.

With regards to logical fallacy. Of geographic spread causes such
differentiation that the statistics aren't comparable between operators,
than would it not be realistic for us to factor that in into the metrics?
Maybe the IAB can advise people to all live in a country as densily
populated as the Netherlands. However, even if geography determines energy
use, I would still like to have the relatie impact of traffic levels in
this equation too! I also take negative correlations, such as the one where
KPN lowered energy use by 50 over the last decade, but increased traffic 20
times!!  I am also willing to admit defeat and incompetence If you show
that yes overall energy flow decreased but all of that was from electricity
use of peripheral systems and not the actual network it self.

How comparability is a logical fallacy is beyond me and defies every tenet
of methods and techniwques of academic social science research I had in my
freshman year. It is exactly by comparing whether the same traffic as well
as different levels of traffic on the same network or other networks under
differing conditions actually changes the results. eg; when traffic is the
same in same nerworke and difference in temperature is 5 degrees, if energy
use changes, we can attribute the changes to traffic.if traffic grows 20%
and energy use is same at the same temp as well as the higher temp, then
traffic may not be relevant. Or we may see minimal changes in energy use
etc. You know, like in the Cisco article where energy use per capacity is
not stable across routers of varying sizes, which suggests capacity is only
one, but not very dominant factor...

More to come later

Op do 15 jun. 2023 00:23 schreef Carlos Pignataro (cpignata) <cpignata=
[e-mail]>:

> Hi, E-impact,
>
> After re-reading and parsing through the thread
> <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/e-impact/t9lzF7j2DQWi4EDp7Pe2JKlcQdg/>,
> I wanted to offer a summary set of highlights and observations, hopefully
> with a bias towards usefulness to the IETF-driven outcomes, removing
> underlying assumptions, and way finding common grounds and next steps.
>
>
> *Desired effect, resources, and comparability: *
>
> On May 15, 2023, at 5:35 PM, Rudolf van der Berg <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Ok, I will be pedantic... efficient is defined as achieving a desired
> effect while not wasting resources.
>
>
> First, if a key desired effect of the Internet (roughly paraphrasing §2 of
> RFC 3935) is achieving various types of communications between parties
> connected to it, bits and traffic are a vehicle towards that goal. Avoiding
> here the judgement or qualification of usefulness just yet — Michael
> Richardson rightly pointed out that Spam and cat videos are not of the same
> usefulness value. So, packets/bits pushed is an important outcome.
>

> On May 15, 2023, at 5:36 PM, Dom Robinson <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> “ kWh consumption by operator is somewhat meaningless as well”
>
> I have to disagree with that, since the absolute amount of energy that
> they use, regardless of the number of subscribers or distribution, is it
> direct measure in the drain on energy resources.
>
>
> Also, electrical energy is a key resource — and for now also not
> considering emission factors, etc., as Lars had suggested the ‘all is bad’
> approach for simplicity.
>
> From these two points, I would consider it not unreasonable to ratio
> resources per unit of desired effect — even starting at the network level.
>
> Taking this as a (potentially unpolished) start, there seem to be at least
> a couple of conflicting points, primarily or summed up as
>
> On May 15, 2023, at 3:26 PM, Rudolf van der Berg <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
> the simple reality is that energy use and data traffic have no correlation
> in fixed and mobile broadband networks. It is like measuring the efficiency
> of cars based on wiper fluid use. Or traffic lights energy use based on the
> number of cars that drive by.
>
>
> The first sentence here expresses an absolute that does not match my
> experience. While clearly the relationship is not linear with zero
> intercept, the blog
> <https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/assessing-the-real-world-environmental-impact-of-routers> referenced
> before explains how, within a networking device, router, switch, etc.,
> different modules have different characteristics of power consumption.
>
>    - Some require constant power independent of traffic flow — but can be
>    turned off in the absence of traffic
>    - Some are simply idle power and independent of traffic load
>    - Some are dependent of packet load (pps)
>    - Others correlate to and are a function of bit load and bandwidth
>    (bps)
>
>
> Now, this tells me there is *some* correlation — might not be linear with
> zero intercept, but there is some. Even if idle power is a high percentage,
> there’s a variable depending on data traffic.
>
> The danger of making ~ “no correlation” bold absolute statements, is that
> a simple counter-example and #houseofcards...
>
> [as an aside, knowing nothing about traffic light planning, but I can find
> sensibility in the relationship between traffic lights🚦and number of cars
> 🚗 driving by, and would not ridicule such measuring of the efficiency of a
> traffic light system — more 🚗🚙🚕🏎️ for a single 🚥 versus 🚦🚦🚦🚦]
>
> Op ma 15 mei 2023 17:25 schreef Rob Wilton (rwilton) <[e-mail]>:
>
>> I struggle to understand how “traffic and energy use are in no way and
>> have never been related”.
>>
> I struggled as well…
>
> On May 15, 2023, at 3:26 PM, Rudolf van der Berg <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
> As I explained there is no scientific basis for the metric. If you look at
> the work by professor Manner, you will see that using the metric to make
> prognosis about the Finnish mobile networks electricity use leads to
> estimates 3 times higher than the official figures.
>
>
> The issue of comparability seems to be the fallacy on the logic.
>
> As it was mentioned already by many, same traffic on a more geo spread-out
> network, versus a dense metro network versus Ecuador versus Canada
> temperatures versus…
>
>
> On May 26, 2023, at 3:52 AM, Dom Robinson <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> I agree that taking an holistic view is paramount.
>
> +
>
> On Jun 9, 2023, at 10:12 AM, Romain Jacob <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> We discussed several times on this mailing list that we have a rather poor
> understanding of the energy consumed by switches and routers depending on
> their load and configuration. One way to address this problem is to perform
> "black box" measurement of the power drawn by such device and fit a power
> model for it.
>
>
> One thing I’d expect we might agree is that the problem space is highly
> complex, brutally interdependent, and deeply nuanced.
> In this, RFC 1925, truth #5 came to mind.
>
> Instead of decomposing a routing system, taking a ‘black box’ approach
> shows some relationship of traffic <-> energy.
> The scope of comparison might be narrow, and as someone suggested could
> even be limited to a given deployment as f(time).
>
> We could define the most realistic variations, including:
>
>    - kWh/GB Optics excluded
>    - kWh/GB including storage to transport, etc.
>
>
> Or:
>
> On Jun 9, 2023, at 10:12 AM, Romain Jacob <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>    - energy efficiency, measured as "maximum power consumed divided by
>       the maximum capacity"
>       - energy proportionality index, capturing how far the device is
>       from being perfectly power-proportional to the load: (max_power -
>       idle_power)/ max_power
>
> But:
>
> On May 15, 2023, at 6:07 PM, Brian E Carpenter <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
> All very interesting but how does this help the IETF improve its protocol
> designs?
>
>
> Suggesting and anchoring on a small number of relevant metrics, as per
> above (as a start), instead of attempting to “ban” others.
>
> And also benchmarking power measurement.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Carlos Pignataro (He/Him)
>
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