Re: [E-impact] kWh/GB should be banned and the IETF should warn against its use

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

I think we really should avoid to be dragged into the low layer metric alone, as
much fun as they are, given how we easily understand them.

IMHO the corect question is to ask how we want to finance the Internet infrastructure
while simultaneously driving down its energy consumption. That is the ultimate problem
to solve. All other work items such as metrics have to trickle down from that.

For example, if i have three internet edge providers putting up competing infrastructures,
none of them ever getting to max utilization, we know we're wasting energy. How do we capture that
as a metric ? And how do we weigh that against competitiveness and innovation ?

If we have three competing core providers, today they likely all have high utilization,
so with some good will, this is better competition, because they all add necessary
transit bandwidth. How do we capture that ?

Then we have the problem of peak vs. average consumption. As long as an operator can
afford it, capacity will be built out for peak - and cost and energy consumption will
be for that peak. And if minimum energy consumption of equipment is maybe just 20%
lower than for peak performance, but average utilization of the equipment is 80% lower
than peak, then we have a big mismatch/problem of energy waste. How do we capture this
in metrics ?

Sure, we can start doing instrumentation of low-level power consumption metrics in equipment,
and we should. But by itself, this work will not move the needle when nobody looks at
the broader picture and those higher layer metrics. It is only those higher layer metrics
that will cause actionable progress IMHO. Peak to average utilization for example. And
key contributors to peak utilization as the worst offenders of energy waste by need ot
building out against such peaks.

Cheers
    Toerless

Disclaimer: Having worked for 30+ years on multicast, i do of course have some opinion
on peak shaving, so when i see how currend trends in streaming are often ignoring many of 
those possibilities and i am saying that it would be nice to have metrics to better expose
the network energy waste of such applications - then of course i am not talking out of
a vacuum or purely from a "save the planet" perspective, but also from the perspective of
creating more awareness for such helpful technologies.


On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 03:25:40PM +0000, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:
> Hi Rudolf,
> 
> I struggle to understand how “traffic and energy use are in no way and have never been related”.
> 
> On some modern forwarding ASICs, between a third and quarter of the power for the forwarding ASIC comes from the dynamic load (e.g., packets switched per-second and bytes switched per-second).  If you consider the other power usage, e.g., optics, fabric, and fan, then the overall dynamic power difference for the device will be much smaller.  But I think that it is probably a somewhat inaccurate generalization to say that they are not related at all, at least for some modern devices.  Clearly, much more significant power savings would be available by disabling optics or shutting down linecards, which may allow some of the fabric planes to be taken offline, fan speeds to be reduced, etc.
> 
> Another way of potentially looking at this is to figure out the total power usage of a network (e.g., perhaps your local ISP), and figure out what portion of the traffic the user is consuming at peak times (i.e., since that it probably the driving factor for network capability planning).  This might give some indirect indication as to what proportion of the network energy usage is effectively due to a given user.  I appreciate that the overall figure may be very crude, but providing an end-user with some rough indication is possibly better than providing none at all.
> 
> Regards,
> Rob
> 
> 
> From: E-impact <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Rudolf van der Berg
> Sent: 12 May 2023 20:05
> To: Hesham ElBakoury <[e-mail]>
> Cc: Romain Jacob <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: [E-impact] kWh/GB should be banned and the IETF should warn against its use
> 
> Hesham,
> 
> Look at the title of the thread. The kWh/GB metic is nonsense. It doesn't convey any comparable and actionable meaning. The numbers are incomparable because traffic and energy use are in no way and have never been related. How is it possible that with the exact same network and equipment the energy use is stable when traffic goes up? Simple it is a useless unscientific metric.
> 
> Op vr 12 mei 2023 20:48 schreef Hesham ElBakoury <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>:
> The DT CR 2022 reports 91 kwh/terabyte. This is higher than 60 kwh/terabyte. Is this because the 60kwh is for the mobile network and the remaining 31kwh is for the DT wired network?
> 
> If DT uses .06 kwh/GB for mobile network,  that is better than the 0.1-0.6 kwh/GB range reported by GSMA. Does that mean that DT network energy efficiency is high or ... ?
> 
> Thanks,
> Hesham
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 12, 2023, 8:22 AM Rudolf van der Berg <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> GSMA is mobile only..
> 
> Op vr 12 mei 2023 17:18 schreef Hesham ElBakoury <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>:
> Thanks Rudolf!
> For DT the numbers are getting smaller every year. I would expect that the numbers in 2023 to be smaller than 2022.
> 
> In a different email you mentioned that Deutsche Telekom reports that it uses 60kWh per Terabyte.  This is different from the numbers reported in 2022 CR report.
> 
> You mentioned that of the participating operators, in this year GSMA report  "66% performed in the 0.1–0.6 kWh/GB range  meaning that most of the included networks used 0.1–0.6 kWh to transfer 1 GB of data. Values outside of this range can be explained by inefficient networks, consumer habits or low data traffic per connection". DT 2022 CR report numbers are smaller than 0.1 kwh/GB. How to explain this low value?
> 
> Hesham
> 
> On Fri, May 12, 2023, 7:32 AM Rudolf van der Berg <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> Here is annual report 2022  https://report.telekom.com/annual-report-2022/services/downloads.html
> https://www.cr-report.telekom.com/2022/management-facts/environment/energy-consumption-efficiency#atn-19726-19728,atn-19726-19729,atn-19726-19730
> 
> 
> Op vr 12 mei 2023 16:19 schreef Hesham ElBakoury <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>>:
> The DT CR-2021 report describes the value for kwh/terabyte [https://www.cr-report.telekom.com/2021/management-facts/environment/energy-consumption-efficiency#atn-19726-19729,atn-19726-19730,atn-19726-19733,atn-19726-19728]
> 
> Note that the total energy consumption increases by 4% year over year while the kwh/terabit decreases year over year.
> 
> I am not sure how the numbers in kwh/GB which are reported in this email thread are calculated?
> 
> Hesham
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 12, 2023, 2:20 AM Romain Jacob <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
> 
> So no DT is not overprovisioned and utilisation is actively obstructed. Or do you have other data and sources that support your assessment?
> 
> Not at all. It was not an assessment, only a suspicion. I only mentioned DT because I understood your previous email as suggesting that DT was maybe not to blame for their poor kWh/GB numbers -- it seems I understood wrong and DT is indeed to blame. I have no issues with that.
> 
> --
> Romain JACOB
> Postdoctoral Researcher
> ETH Zurich
> Networked Systems Group (NSG)
> Lead: Prof. Laurent Vanbever
> www.romainjacob.net<https://www.romainjacob.net/>
> @RJacobPartner<https://twitter.com/RJacobPartner>
> @[e-mail]<https://discuss.systems/@jacobr>
> Gloriastrasse 35, ETZ G81
> 8092 Zurich
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