* Energy Efficient Ethernet Study Group examines 0Base-T possibilities
You are no doubt familiar with the different terms used to refer to Ethernet over copper cabling – 10Base-T, 100Base-T, and 1000Base-T, for Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet, respectively. I recently came across a new one (new to me): 0Base-T.
At first glance, something called “0Base-T” would seem rather useless, since the number – in this case, zero – refers to the speed. Zero megabits per second won’t get you many streaming videos. Or much else.
The term is being used in the IEEE’s Energy Efficient Ethernet Study Group to refer to the power control that EEE would need to save electricity. That is, if you really want to save energy, you might let a management application use a mechanism via Ethernet to turn computers on or off as needed, to bring those network connections down to zero megabits per second.
Nortel’s Geoff Thompson last month posted this PDF presentation on the IEEE’s Web site to explain the possibilities.
He writes that powering on a device could happen either through Wake on LAN, which has been used for years, or through Power over Ethernet (PoE) Turn On. Both approaches would require some kind of management application to manage the activation of computers in the network.
Powering off a device would be done by an in-band packet-based command. Thompson notes, though, that any kind of network-based power-down request raises “serious network and operational security concerns.” No kidding. As an extreme case, imagine a hacker getting the ability to power down multiple machines in a corporate network by using a remote command.
