UNH-IOL's facility becomes Energy Efficient Ethernet test bed

Supporters of the emerging IEEE's 803.2az Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) draft standard rejoice: You're welcome to use the University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) to test the emerging protocol that addresses the growing need for service providers and vendors to be more energy efficient.  

What makes today's Ethernet protocol less power efficient is that it consumes power even if no one is using the devices connected to the LAN or WAN connection. To resolve the energy consumption issue, the new EEE protocol enables network devices to shift into a low power idle mode when they are not transmitting data. And when a user is ready to use that network device again they can wake them back up with minimal latency with little or no impact on data transmission.

At the UNH-IOL, 802.3az member companies can assess the interoperability of devices before the standard is set to be completed next year to support products that are currently following the draft standard.

"Energy efficiency is top of mind with our member companies and their customers so the pre-testing process will allow them to be able to deliver new solutions in the quickest possible timeframe," said Jeff Lapak, senior engineer for the UNH-IOL in a release.

For more:
- see the release here

Related articles:
Infonetics: Ethernet exchanges, wireless backhaul drive Ethernet service market
Diameter in IMS: Why real world IP service testing is here to stay