Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-infrastructure Overview

One of the greatest threats to our future society and economy is global warming. It is estimated that the CO2 emissions of the ICT industry alone exceeds the carbon output of the entire aviation industry. The ICT industry and research community has a collective responsibility to help address this problem. Fortunately, as compared to the aviation industry, the ICT industry and research community has the tools at hand to reduce its direct CO2 output to zero and the additional capability of enabling other sectors of society to reduce their carbon footprint through "Carbon rewards" rather than unpopular "Carbon taxes". Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The current preferred approaches are to impose “carbon” taxes and implement various forms of cap and trade or carbon offset systems. However another approach to help reduce carbon emission is to “reward” those who reduce their carbon footprint. It is estimated that consumers control or influence over 60% of all CO2 emissions. As such, one possible reward system of trading “bits and bandwidth for carbon”, or sometimes called "gCommerce" is to provide homeowners with free fiber to the home or free wireless products and other electronic services such as ebooks and eMovies if they agree to pay a premium on their energy consumption which will encourage them to reduce emissions by turning down the thermostat or using public transportation. Not only does the consumer benefit, but this business model also provides new revenue opportunities for network operators, optical equipment manufacturers, and eCommerce application providers.


Universities can also play a significant leadership role as cyber-infrastructure is one of the major producers of CO2 emissions at our universities. Although cyber-infrastructure is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. The beauty of cyber-infrastructure and ICT in general, is that thanks to high speed optical networks, this equipment can be located virtually anywhere. Relocating cyber-infrastructure computers, databases, instrumentation and laboratory equipment to remote renewable energy sites not only helps the environment but can also save the institution significant money in their energy bills. More importantly such a strategy also allows the university or researcher to earn valuable carbon offset dollars. A good example of this strategy is the PROMPT initiative "Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming (G-NGI)" where researchers and institutions can earn valuable offset dollars for Internet technologies and process that reduce CO2 emissions. Universities can also encourage students and faculty to reduce their respective carbon footprint by also implementing a "gCommerce" reward system such as free eTextbooks, free downloads of video and music in exchange for students paying a premium on parking, travel and other related activities.


For more details please see

Free Fiber and High Speed Internet to the Home Initiative
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/


ICT and Global Warming - opportunities for innovation and economic growth
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgbgjrct_2767dxpbdvcf


PROMPT Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming

http://www.promptinc.org/documents/NGI_release_en_v2.pdf



Thursday, October 30, 2008

World's first demo of "follow the sun/follow the wind" internet and grid

[At the PROMPT workshop on “Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming” researchers from Barcelona, Amsterdam, Ottawa and Chicago demonstrated the world’s first “follow the sun/follow the wind” Internet and computational grid where routing and computational nodes of HPDMnet, sitting on top of an optical infrastructure provided by GLIF, SURFnet, CANARIE, i2CAT, STAR LIGHT were rapidly relocated around the world simulating the availability of renewable energy sources at these nodes. The researchers demonstrated that virtual machines and logical routers (and associated network topologies) could be quickly moved within a matter of seconds (or minutes if storage also had to be relocated), which is well within the turbine spin down cycle of windmills and the diurnal power curve of solar panels.

Although the story that Internet was originally designed to survive a nuclear war may not be true, the Internet does have the inherent capability to survive a far more serious crisis facing this planet – global warming. The same applies to cyber-infrastructure facilities such as computational grids. As the demand for renewable energy grows because of proposed cap and trade systems in the US and elsewhere, those industry sectors that can use low cost renewable energy sources, “in situ”, as opposed to being connected to the electrical grid will be well positioned to dominate the new zero carbon economy.

The advent of 1000G wavelengths next year and the adoption of many of the UCLP principles by companies like CISCO with their new XR router IOS (based on another Ottawa company’s real time OS-QNX) will allow deployment of global articulated private networks (APNs) using logical routers, which will further enable a future Internet whose nodes can be entirely operated with renewable power facilities that are independent of the electrical grid. Internet routing protocols and network configuration tools like UCLP (Argia) used in combination with logical routers and virtual computers will allow for the rapid re-configuration of virtual networks and distributed computing based on the local availability of renewable power.

In the coming year more nodes of the HPDMnet network will be powered solely by windmills or solar panels. Researchers from around the world are more than welcome to participate in this exciting initiative.


Congratulations to Mathieu Lemay and his colleagues at i2Cat, UoAmsterdam, CRC, iCAIR, PROMPT, SURFnet and CANARIE for this successful demo.


For more details on “follow the sun/follow the wind” project please see
Www.greenngi.com

For information on HPDMnet please
http://www.hpdmnet.net/

For information on PROMPT’s Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming please see
http://www.promptinc.org/documents/NGI_release_en_v2.pdf
http://www.promptinc.org/index_en.html
Posted by Bill St. Arnaud at 5:54 AM

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