• Environmental costs of the net

    From groovee@cyberdude.com@21:1/5 to All on Sun Feb 23 00:10:11 2020
    Does playing a video locally hurt the environment less than playing that same video off of Youtube?
    Note that the Internet is on *anyway*, ie. all the routers and switches and whatever are *already* on - assuming that's so, is there an environmental cost to simply transporting that *one extra* file from point A to point B?


    Thanks.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Barry Margolin@21:1/5 to groovee@cyberdude.com on Mon Feb 24 10:21:23 2020
    In article <0c53c51c-1002-463d-ac59-136aa80dd160@googlegroups.com>,
    groovee@cyberdude.com wrote:

    Does playing a video locally hurt the environment less than playing that same video off of Youtube?
    Note that the Internet is on *anyway*, ie. all the routers and switches and whatever are *already* on - assuming that's so, is there an environmental cost to simply transporting that *one extra* file from point A to point B?

    The number and size of routers that have to be deployed depends on the
    total amount of network traffic. So if more people watch video online,
    we need more routers and cables.

    And modern electronic devices don't use a constant amount of power. When they're active they use more power than when they're idle. So the more
    bits a router has to transfer, the more energy it uses.

    --
    Barry Margolin
    Arlington, MA

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jorgen Grahn@21:1/5 to groovee@cyberdude.com on Mon Feb 24 23:04:06 2020
    On Sun, 2020-02-23, groovee@cyberdude.com wrote:

    Does playing a video locally hurt the environment less than playing
    that same video off of Youtube?

    Note that the Internet is on *anyway*, ie. all the routers and
    switches and whatever are *already* on - assuming that's so, is
    there an environmental cost to simply transporting that *one extra*
    file from point A to point B?

    I think if you're really interested, it's better if you look for
    research on the subject and summarize here what you find. It's an
    interesting topic.

    I did a quick search and found

    Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency in the Internet
    Kerry Hinton,
    Jayant Baliga,
    Michael Feng,
    Robert Ayre,
    Rodney S. Tucker
    University of Melbourne

    Abstract

    This article provides an overview of a network-based model of power
    consumption in Internet infrastructure. This model provides insight
    into how different parts of the Internet will contribute to network
    power as Internet access increase over time. The model shows that
    today the access network dominates the Internet’s power consumption
    and, as access speeds grow, the core network routers will dominate
    power consumption. The power consumption of data centers and content
    distribution networks is dominated by the power consumption of data
    storage for material that is infrequently downloaded and by the
    transport of the data for material that is frequently
    downloaded. Based on the model several strategies to improve the
    energy efficiency of the Internet are presented.

    /Jorgen

    --
    // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
    \X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From groovee@cyberdude.com@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 27 17:26:00 2020
    Thanks, both of you :)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)