by mos6507 » Mon 07 Jul 2008, 04:25:18
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DoomWarrior', '
')To the extent that the Internet is extremely energy intensive, the ONLY way it will survive is if it has the substantial support of TPTB (including government, military, academia, technology sector, and private enterprise).
Have there been any studies to determine exactly
how energy intensive the internet is? It seems to me the internet at least has the potential to save a lot more energy than it takes to run it if you factor in the reduction in travel.
Also, the internet has the potential to eliminate other technologies. For instance, Skype replacing the telephone, or streaming video replacing TV, downloads replacing the need to produce and distribute physical media.
The big problem with the internet is that it's a utility on top of a utility. Just as the electric power plants need to run above the load to absorb spikes in demand, server farms need to be deployed in enough strength to accomodate peak loads. During times of low load, you have massive standby server overkill. I really don't think a lot of effort has been spent maximizing the energy efficiency of servers farms, and so there is a lot of improvement that can and surely will be made, and a lot of prioritized powerdown measures that can be instituted to the cruftiest and least accessed parts of the internet before there is any measurable end user impact.