Datatracker: https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/sustain/about/
ICS: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/124/session/34752.ics
When: 9:30 - 11:00 EST (14:30 - 16:00 UTC)
Room: St Denis -- https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/124/floor-plan
Co-chairs: Ali Rezaki (ali.rezaki@nokia.com), Eve Schooler (eve.schooler@gmail.com), Michael Welzl (michawe@ifi.uio.no)
Materials: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/124/session/sustain
Note taking: https://notes.ietf.org/notes-ietf-124-sustain
Remote participation: https://meetings.conf.meetecho.com/ietf124/?session=34752
Local onsite tool: https://meetings.conf.meetecho.com/onsite124/?session=34752
Chat: https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/sustain
Recording: (YouTube available post session)
REMINDER to Presenters: the duration times include Q&A
Note takers: Your names go here!
Presenters: Ali Rezaki (Nokia), Eve Schooler (U Oxford), & Michael Welzl (U Oslo)
Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-irtf-sustain/
Slides: slides-sustain-chair-intro
Presenter: Romain Jacob (ETH Zürich)
Paper: Fantastic Joules and Where to Find Them (IMC'25)
Slides: slides-fantastic-joules-and-where-to-find-them
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 finegrained 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. Our initial analysis of 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.
Presenter: Jainam Parikh and Carlos Pignataro
Internet-Draft: draft-pignataro-icmp-enviro-info-00
Slides: slides-icmp-extensions-for-environmental-information
Abstract:
* This document defines a data structure that can be appended to selected ICMP messages. The ICMP extension defined herein can be used to gain visibility on environmental sustainability information on the Internet by providing per-hop (i.e., per topological network node) power metrics and other present or future sustainability metrics. This will contribute to achieving an objective mentioned in the IAB E-Impact workshop. The techniques presented are useful not only in a transactional setting (e.g., a user-issued traceroute or a ping request), but also in a scheduled automated setting where they may be run periodically in a mesh across an administrative domain to map out environmental sustainability metrics.
Presenter: Jan Lindblad (All for Eco AB)
Slides: slides-carbon-accounting
Related work: Carbon Accounting Conference 2025
Presenter: Adrián Gallego-Sanchez (T-Systems)
Internet-Draft: draft-malja-sustain-petra-augmented-01
Slides: slides-petra-augmented
Related work: draft-petra-green-api
Abstract:
* This document describes an API to query a network regarding its Energy Traffic Ratio and other energy-related metric for a given network path.
Presenter: Jukka Manner (Aalto U.)
Paper: in Proceedings IEEE PIMRC'25
Slides: slides-understanding-3g-sunset-in-an-operational-networks
Abstract:
* New mobile network technologies are introduced about every ten years. Each technology is still designed to have a long lifetime that results in mobile operators running multiple radio technologies at the same time on their network. Currently, up to four technologies are operated simultaneously: 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. This increases the network’s energy consumption and wastes radio resources because newer technologies provide more capacity on the same spectrum. For these reasons, many mobile operators have closed down their 3G network and even more will do so in the coming years. The hope is that the 3G sunset will have a positive impact, but there is no published analysis on this. In this paper, we provide a world-first analysis of the impact on closing 3G in a modern operational nation-wide mobile network. We show the impact on energy consumption and capacity over a five-month period and how the network behaves after 3G is closed and once 4G takes over the frequencies freed by 3G. We find that 4G can serve the frequency with the same power consumption while offering much higher capacity.