Switch Vendors Call For Green Measurement Standards

ProCurve global director of sales and marketing Mark Thompson agreed.

ProCurve, like Cisco, ranked poorly for power consumption with In-Stat indicating that 24-port ProCurve switches offer roughly 0.60 Gbps per watt and its 48-port switches offer around 0.80 Gbps per watt. According to In-Stat, ProCurve ranked eleventh out of 13 vendors in the 24-port category and twelfth out of 13 for 48-port switches.

"It's great that people care about this, but the industry lacks a standardized way of measuring," Thompson said, adding that In-Stat ranked vendors based on what they list on their data sheets, for which ProCurve quotes the worst-case power draw. Thompson said that worst case scenario is often "very different than real life experience."

"There's a big difference between power when a switch is turned on and sitting there than when there are several devices connected," Thompson continued.

Like Cisco's Lasser-Raab, however, Thompson said there needs to be benchmark levels to compare exactly how green switches are. Internally, he said, ProCurve and its parent HP are working diligently to drive green initiatives.

"Outside of power I think the right things are going on," Thompson said. "On the power front we need standardized definitions of how power is judged and do that in terms of how it's applicable in certain environments."

Measuring a gigabit of switch capacity per watt drawn, Thompson said, isn't the right approach.

"You could have the largest engine in your car but you still have to put gas in it," he said. "You have to get from point A to point B whether you're driving a Hummer or a Honda Fit."

Like the others, Force 10 Networks also called for an apples to apples comparison.

"In general, Force 10 believes that the concept of green networking equipment is a bit misleading," said Stephen Garrison, Force 10's vice president of marketing. "Networking equipment requires power and as new features are added, such as PoE, or system density increases, even more power is needed. What Force 10 aims to do is provide the tools that can help customers optimize their power needs for their unique requirements. We do this at the system architecture level with unique management features as well as at the design level."

Garrison highlighted Force 10's C300, an eight-slot chassis with an advanced power management system that allows customers to optimize power needs on a per port basis. He said the C300 fits into green strategies.

"Rather than delivering 15.4 watts of power to every port on a single PoE-enabled line card, customers can specify power to each port, reducing consumption and optimizing available power in the wiring closet," he said. "Additionally, the C300 features a passive copper backplane, further reducing power required to run the switch."

Both In-Stat's Scherer and Fodale agreed that some sort of green measurement standard is needed and noted that the report was intended to give end customers some guidance when they're making switching decisions.

"There's a lack of a standard of how they provide measure on their products and data sheets," Fodale said. "It's going to take a while to get to that point. There's a lot of factors that go into the vendors' green scores and it's really hard for the customer to get a true comparison. We want to keep having a dialog. We understand this is going to take a while."

Regardless of the testing methods, switching vendors agreed that studies like In-Stat's and certifications like Miercom's are going to continue to highlight the need for solutions that consume less power and run more efficiently, and they'll act as a catalyst for vendors to fine tune their green initiatives.

"We're seeing more interest and more requirements and we're seeing progress in green as a consideration," Lasser-Raab said. "We're seeing a very strong trend. If we can see a report of true testing that compares power consumption and other factors, we'll be on the right track. We need more accurate testing based on benchmarks."

A spokesman from Extreme Networks summed it up like this: "The bottom line is that independent testing is the only way to achieve an accurate ranking of what different switches consume."