Switch Vendors Call For Green Measurement Standards

While In-Stat's study is causing a stir by pointing out that many vendors' green messages may not be all they're cracked up to be, vendors have collectively agreed that such studies are beneficial, because they draw attention to the issues. However, many have taken exception to how the In-Stat rankings were tabulated.

According to the In-Stat report, Nortel 24-port switches offered a hair over 0.50 Gbps per watt and 48-port switches offered about 1.4 Gbps per watt, putting Nortel toward the bottom of the pack when it comes to power efficiency.

Nortel's Power, however, said In-Stat's findings need to be taken with a grain of salt, because the report was not based on real-world tests and amounts to an "apples to oranges" comparison. He added that a number of the products rated by In-Stat run the gamut between enterprise, SMB and home networking switches and true comparisons cannot be made.

"It's purely a data sheet analysis. That's not a real comparison," he said. "Someone needs to test like for like. It's not like we'd ever come up against D-Link in a bid."

Foundry Networks, which hit near the bottom of the heap in the In-Stat study with about 1.10 Gbps per watt for its 48-port switches and last for 24-port switches with about 0.40 Gbps per watt, agreed that the comparisons were too broad. One Foundry spokesman said In-Stat's comparisons were like "comparing a Formula One car to a Prius."

"Non-enterprise class products and enterprise/service provider grade products are compared equally here," the Foundry spokesman said. "SOHO and small business switches are inherently going to use less power, they perform less function, less performance, less reliability, etc."

Victoria Fodale, In-Stat senior analyst and the report's co-author, however, said the report is intended to spark dialogue and generate discussions on green networking, something that has been hammered home on the server and data center side, but not yet with switching.

"This was seen as a starting point, not an end all. There's no clear starting point for end users to gauge this," she said, adding that In-Stat's data sheet audit to rate power efficiency has already created a stir. "We expected this reaction and wanted to provoke a dialogue."

In-Stat research analyst Scott Scherer agreed. He added, however, that In-Stat compared data sheets for high performance fixed switches to keep the results consistent. He said the results showed the most effective way to objectively measure power consumption on paper.

"It's not to rate the vendors," Scherer said.

Fodale added: "When we started this, we didn't know where [the vendors] would fall."

And while vendors may see In-Stat's results as skewed, Power said studies like In-Stat's can act as a rallying cry for vendors to put some kind of metrics in place for measuring how green switches are.

For its part, Nortel will be launching a channel program around its energy efficiency calculator, which will enable partners to perform energy audits for customers to show them where they can save money and cut down on energy use.

"In that case, the customer has nothing to lose," Power said. "The channels are all over [green], they're hearing from their customers."

Cisco's Lasser-Raab agreed, saying In-Stat's study is a valuable tool to draw attention to green issues, but more work needs to be done to determine how to accurately measure what is green. According to In-Stat, Cisco ranked last out of 13 vendors in the 48-port category with less than one half Gbps per watt and penultimate in the 24-port category with similar numbers.

"How much power the switches uses the amount of power that a switch uses is just one measure of power efficiency; there is a bigger picture," Lasser-Raab said.

Lasser-Raab said power efficiency is just one consideration of the overall green picture. She said other factors like cooling, heating and power management must come into play to truly determine how efficient a switch operates. Additionally, she said, the services integrated per device and the extended services life a switch can offer must also come into play.

"We're not comparing apples to apples here," Lasser-Raab said of the study, pointing to Miercom and its Green Certification.

Lasser-Raab added however that In-Stat's study is drawing attention and creating awareness in the industry that green solutions are becoming a necessity, and that is a good sign that the industry is starting to wake up.

NEXT: More Calls For Green Measurement Standards