John Chambers, CEO of Cisco and Al Gore, former VP and Nobel Laureate are conducting a telepresence demonstration at VoiceCon in Orlando next Wednesday, March 19. They've asked for questions from the public to the 'ecopanel'. If you have a question to ask John or Al, send it here. Here's my question:
Data centers have been reported as being responsible for as much as 1.5% of electrical demand here in the USA. Lately, much has been made of companies implementing virtual data centers that combine all the always-on computing resources into a few physical servers capable of many virtual servers. Nothing is being said about virtualizing the 'always-on' network. Surely all those switches and routers and security appliances still in service that Cisco has sold over the years have together enormous power demands. For example, every one of the broadband homes have a Wi-Fi access point, a router and a DSL modem chewing up the Watts regardless of whether a useful packet is being passed or not. What is Cisco specifically doing to reduce the power demands of their networking gear? Will we ever see an 'on-demand, but not always on' network?
