Switch Vendors Call For Green Measurement Standards

In dispute, however, is exactly how the greenness of network equipment is measured. But one thing many network switching vendors agree upon is that there needs to be some standard of measure to determine what's green and what's not.

"Green is becoming a very important area in the industry," said Inbar Lasser-Raab, director of access routing and switching for Cisco Systems. "But there are no industry-defined parameters. There is no one measure to say who is the greenest."

There are several organizations trying to nail down some kind of green measure. Groups like Miercom, Tolly Group and In-Stat have all recently offered different ways to judge who is green and who isn't.

Miercom, for example, is a networking product test center and consultancy that last month launched a new "Certified Green" testing program to offer guidance to organizations looking to improve their green IT and business practices. The Miercom program is challenging networking vendors to design, develop and deploy products that lower energy costs and power consumption; comply with increasingly stringent environmental directives; reduce eWaste; and heighten the green effect of networking infrastructure.

In-Stat, meanwhile, is raising eyebrows with its recent study titled "Green Networking Equipment: Who Leads and Who Lags?" that ranked both 24-port and 48-port Gigabit Ethernet fixed managed Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches from more than a dozen vendors based on their fabric capacity (Gigabits per second) per watt. The study found that switches from 3Com, Netgear and SMC are among the most power efficient, while others like Cisco Systems, Nortel and ProCurve Networking by HP ranked quite low.

The Tolly Group also recently released a report comparing switching vendors based on resiliency, performance and total cost of ownership, and tying in the amount of power switches consume.

Lasser-Raab, who said Cisco's Catalyst switches were among the first to be green certified for Miercom, said the Green Certification is a step in the right direction because it takes into consideration several facets of what's required to make a solution green.

The Miercom Green Certification is powered by Ixia, an IP performance test system and service verification platform for IP infrastructure and services. The Ixia solution can fully load and exercise Layer 2 through Layer 7 network elements and infrastructures and emulate real-world data center application traffic, from which Ixia can test multiple application profiles to offer an accurate benchmark of power per performance.

Miercom has said the Certified Green program will combine detailed measurement criteria with a holistic view of product impact in enabling green IT and business practices of network operators. The program will certify products based on power efficiency, including power usage and management, heat dissipation, cooling requirements, energy efficiency and overall product efficiency.

For Nortel Networks, green testing is a step in the right direction as green becomes a major focal point for vendors, VARs and customers. Jake Power, director of marketing for converged data networks for the Toronto-based vendor, said consistent testing standards are becoming a necessity to provide insight into greenness.

"Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon that this needs to be done," Power said. "I'd like to see some sort of testing standards. More and more realistic testing has to be done. It's been unbelievable to me how much of this [greenness] has grown into a life of its own."

Nortel has recently launched a massive green campaign to promote its self-proclaimed environmentally friendly networking gear. The vendor took out full-page ads in national U.S. newspapers and strongly promoted its energy efficiency calculator, which Nortel debuted at VoiceCon Orlando 2008, a tool that measures power consumption and cooling metrics of its own solutions versus solutions from other vendors, like Cisco.

"We're pushing the energy efficiency point of view," Power said. "Nortel is relying on its message of resiliency, performance, total cost of ownership and energy efficiency to get the green word out. Let's get out there and push this bold message."

Power pointed to the recent Tolly Group report that concluded Nortel Power over Ethernet switches were among the greenest in the market place, often proving to be 50 percent " give or take " more energy efficient than devices from its competitors.

NEXT: Which Switches Are Greenest?