An Electricity-Cost-Aware Internet Routing Scheme

Al writes "Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Akamai have developed a network-routing scheme that could save 'internet-scale' companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft million of dollars each year by moving data to locations with the best electricity prices for a particular day. The scheme simply considers both the most efficient routing path for data and the potential cost savings of routing it somewhere farther away. The researchers studied price fluctuations at locations across the country and used data from Akamai caching servers to test the idea out. In the best possible scenario — which would require more efficient servers — they estimate that companies could save as much as 40% on the electricity bills (tens of millions each year). Google already operates at least one datacenter that shuts down when temperatures get too high. Is this the next logical step for internet computing?"

Comments

Low Datacenter Costs

[lobiusmoop]

On the subject of data center running costs, why are there not more data centers in Iceland? The cold climate (to minimize cooling costs, which can be 50% of the total power drain in hot climates) combined with cheap renewable geothermal electricity would make it ideal I think.