Introducing standby capabilities into next-generation network devices

In this contribution, our main objective is to introduce and to support standby modes in next-generation devices for backbone networks. Our main idea consists of periodically reconfiguring nodes and links to meet incoming traffic volumes and operational constraints of real-world networks, such as reliability, stability, quality of service, and re-convergence times. To this purpose, the approach is mainly founded on two features already and largely present in today's networks and devices: the network resource virtualization and the modular architecture of nodes. By means of a Linux SW router prototype, we demonstrated that the proposed approach allows dynamically sleeping pieces of hardware in several network nodes, while maintaining good network performance levels, and without causing undesired network instabilities. © 2010 ACM.