Fantastic Joules and Where to Find Them. Modeling and Optimizing Router Energy Demand
Abstract
Reducing our society’s energy demand is critical to address the sustainability challenge. While the Internet currently accounts for 1—1.5% of global electricity consumption and continues to grow, the energy demands of one of its core components—routers—remain poorly understood. The available power data is limited and not fined-grained enough, offering little actionable insight into strategies for effectively reducing the Internet’s energy consumption. To address this, we assemble and present a unique dataset including datasheet information, router-internal measurements, external power measurements, and router power models. This dataset depicts a clearer picture of routers energy demand and provides insights on how to reduce it. The dataset suggests, e.g., that (i) datasheets are not useful predictors, sometimes even incorrect; (ii) internal router power measurements have limited accuracy; (iii) using more efficient and better-sized power supply units is a promising energy-saving vector; (iv) turning links off is less efficient than anticipated in the literature. This work also highlights the limitations of today’s power monitoring practices and provides suggestions for improvement.
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BibTex
@INPROCEEDINGS{jacob2025fantastic,
year = {2025-10},
type = {Conference Paper},
author = {Jacob, Romain and Röllin, Lukas and Lim, Jackie and Chung, Jonathan and Béhanzin, Maurice and Wang, Weiran and Hunziker, Andreas and Moroianu, Theodor and Tabaeiaghdaei, Seyedali and Perrig, Adrian and Vanbever, Laurent},
abstract = {Reducing our society’s energy demand is critical to address the sustainability challenge. While the Internet currently accounts for 1—1.5% of global electricity consumption and continues to grow, the energy demands of one of its core components—routers—remain poorly understood. The available power data is limited and not fined-grained enough, offering little actionable insight into strategies for effectively reducing the Internet’s energy consumption. To address this, we assemble and present a unique dataset including datasheet information, router-internal measurements, external power measurements, and router power models. This dataset depicts a clearer picture of routers energy demand and provides insights on how to reduce it. The dataset suggests, e.g., that (i) datasheets are not useful predictors, sometimes even incorrect; (ii) internal router power measurements have limited accuracy; (iii) using more efficient and better-sized power supply units is a promising energy-saving vector; (iv) turning links off is less efficient than anticipated in the literature. This work also highlights the limitations of today’s power monitoring practices and provides suggestions for improvement.},
language = {en},
title = {Fantastic Joules and Where to Find Them. Modeling and Optimizing Router Energy Demand},
Note = {ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2025); Conference Location: Madison, WI, USA; Conference Date: October 28-31, 2025}
}Research Collection: 20.500.11850/728960