The network of networks evolves every second. Servers are installed and retired, architects and engineers implement advanced designs to reduce costs, and new platforms (both hardware and software) make efficiency their number one priority. Still, every optimization has a limit, and the Internet's infrastructure needs energy like anything else. This recent video helps us get a more precise idea about the amount.
Companies often talk about the cloud, a romantic name for what is really a legion of data centers scattered around the globe. When installing a new data center, the titans of the Internet must study every potential location carefully. Sometimes it's convenient to recycle an existing structure, as Google did with its data center cooled by seawater in Hamina, and other times starting from scratch is the most sensible option. Regardless of the case, the question has been floating among us for a long time: How much energy does the Internet use? These very lines, written in a draft on Google Docs, are stored on some hard drive, solid state drive, or remote tape backup that works frantically to answer my requests, and those of thousands of users. But if the Internet's infrastructure changes every moment, how can we obtain a number?
A recent video published by the folks at SciShow starts this search through another fundamental piece of data: the volume of data. In 1992, the Internet transferred about 100 gigabytes daily worldwide, a fifth of the capacity of my main hard drive. A quick fast-forward to 2013, and the average global volume jumped dramatically to about 28 terabytes per second. The most precise study on Internet energy consumption was published in 2011, and it speaks of 2 percent of the world's energy. The most curious thing is that many people imagine servers working at 100 percent, when in reality that's not the case. A good number of them average between 10 and 15 percent, and there are even servers 'on standby', ready to respond to any peak in demand. In the United States alone, during 2013, data centers installed there devoured 91 billion kilowatt-hours, and it's estimated that by 2020, the number will rise to 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually, something like 51 coal-based power plants.
Cutting energy costs
Needless to say, experts have a wide repertoire of tricks to lower consumption and reduce overall cost in each data center. The first is based on organizing hot and cold aisles, which allows the fans in each server to consume 25 percent less energy to keep the hardware in thermal balance. Then we find something even simpler: raising the air conditioning temperature. A server can operate without major issues between 18 and 27 degrees Celsius, but many data centers use a much lower temperature, probably to compensate for deficiencies in other aspects. Depending on the region, just half a degree extra can equate to a 5 percent reduction in energy costs. Finally, we come to something we know a bit better: virtualization. As I mentioned above, many servers run at a fraction of their capacity. Virtualization combines several servers into one, leading to a decrease in energy consumption and maintenance time. In the best case, virtualization represents a 40 percent savings. How high will consumption be in the future? Between virtualization and the (now delayed) introduction of ARM servers, there is the possibility of significant savings, but the number of users keeps growing...
