Here are my thoughts: Less energy usage means that we need to be more efficient with our energy. It also means that scarcity will be a thing, and that drives prices up. Sending or receiving data over the line will get more expensive, since datacenters will need to invest heavily in new infrastructure. Expect outages of the network, when there is no electricity available. Can we handle that? Currently half the world is behind Cloudflare, and we know what happens when that site goes down. Internet is becoming a "key" factor. I am actually thinking of promoting dial-up and packet radio as alternative sources, in case networks go down and we need to rely on generators and powerbanks to access the internet. Why not even implement RFC2549 (although it's really slow). I already noticed that during one blackout, not only did I had no internet, I had no heating, I had no hardline, no television, nothing. What would happen if your datacenter was suddenly unreachable due to a power outage? AI is an emerging tech, but consumes kWh of energy. Its going to go bigger and bigger, with more and more people sitting more and more behind computers, creating more and more data traffic. My suggestion is actually to work from infrastructure up: How can I send the most useful data using the least amount of bits, as efficiently as possible? That is one way to reduce "bloat". Many frameworks actually introduced bloat in their systems... Secondly: How can I promote "green" networks? We have QoS and OSPF, but can they be upgraded so they take electronic footprint into account? The government wants to add "CO2 tax", but is it possible to implement this on infrastructure? Like toll roads trading speed for payments, can we "tax" traffic for using co2-heavy routes? Having a website that can really efficiently send data back can for example use a slower network, at lower CO2 cost and lower premium. But that should not be up to the provider, but to the user sending that data. It might mean the request is slower, but it also means that infrastructure that lower their CO2 footprint will see increased traffic. What you do want to prevent is to have ISPs do "traffic shaping", to force requests to go through inefficient systems to reduce cost. This will be the other end of the weighing scale: At one end you want to reduce the CO2 footprint, but at the other end you have companies having to make decisions to meet that goal. Just my 2 cents Julius Op di 20 dec. 2022 17:46 schreef Vesna Manojlovic <BECHA@ripe.net>:
Dear colleagues,
I wrote a report from the IAB's "Workshop on e-Impact":
https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/e-impact/
Here is an urgent plea from network operators, academic researchers and activists: we must decrease energy consumption and materials usage > in Internet operations, governance, and standardisation. This is our only hope if we're to adapt to the current climate crisis and prevent catastrophic consequences.
Please read the full article here:
https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/a-plea-for-climate-justice-report-from-th...
Looking forward to your comments, contributions & questions!
Regards, Vesna Manojlovic
-- Senior Community Builder, RIPE NCC https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/
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