CO2-Awareness in telecommunication networks

The ICT sector emits about 1.4 gigatonnes of CO2 worldwide. Of these emissions, about 6% are attributable to the global internet backbone, which amounts to about 233 megatonnes per year. The internet backbone consumes about 2.5% of the world's electricity. The rapid growth of the internet also leads to a further growth of these key figures, which calls for measures in view of global warming.

Green routing in telecommunication networks

The INS has set itself the goal of conducting research in the field of green routing. The vision is to reduce the carbon footprint of the internet by routing data traffic through «greener» paths. The mission is to use the energy required by the internet backbone more efficiently. Specifically, the energy per transmitted data bit should be reduced. We as an institute are concentrating our research on creating a so-called «Green Metric», which will show the energy consumption per packet. This would make it possible to control routing on the basis of energy consumption.