HP Plays Key Role In Energy Efficient Ethernet Standard Development

HP has announced it is the first to ship products based on a new energy-efficient Ethernet standard it helped develop that enables clients to reduce the energy consumption and operational costs of their IT equipment.

The IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet standard (IEEE 802.3az) reduces power consumption of IT devices by automatically adjusting energy use based on actual network traffic between switches and other networked devices in real time.

The new HP E-Series zl modules are the first IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet-enabled switches to automatically enter “sleep mode” as will connected EEE-devices, when no traffic is being transmitted. Through HP’s implementation of the standard, clients benefit from lower power consumption, both at the switch and the end-point device, reducing total cost of ownership by up to 51 percent.

During low activity, Energy Efficient Ethernet-enabled products enter a “sleep mode” that uses less energy than idling at full power, but allows the connected devices to instantly re-engage when data transmission occurs. This enables significant power savings over traditional switches, which offer limited correlation between energy consumption and actual traffic flow.

In the future, the IEEE Energy Efficient Ethernet standard will be used across multiple devices, including servers, laptops and wireless access points. This will further reduce energy consumption and, therefore, lower IT costs across the enterprise.