[CAnet - news] New revenue opportunities for R&E networks and cyber-infrastructure

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
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 [One of the growing challenges for many campuses around the world is how to
accommodate the power and cooling requirements of cyber-infrastructure
facilities such as high performance computers, storage facilities, etc. 

Increasingly the costs of the bricks and mortar, power and cooling to house
these facilities significantly outweigh costs of the actual
cyber-infrastructure equipment.

In Canada, for example, many universities who are part of the HPC Consortium
called Compute Canada will have to make significant investments in the
coming year, to install and upgrade power and air conditioning systems to
host a range of new computation facilities funded by CFI at various
institutions. 

The carbon emission impact has yet to be even taken into consideration in
many any of these plans. The carbon footprint of a modern HPC facility can
easily exceed the average use of several SUVs. 

Global warming in not only a problem to be solved by politicians. It is a
global  issue in which we all have a personal  responsibility to address
regardless if we are an average joe citizen or world leading computer
scientist.  

Researchers and funding bodies need to take into consideration the carbon
dioxide emission impact of all these cyber-infrastructure facilities.
Building the fastest and best supercomputer regardless of its environmental
impact is simply not an option any more.  Universities and computing science
researchers should be playing a leading role in identifying new
cyber-infrastructure solutions which not only address their research
requirements but also take into account the carbon emission impact of these
facilities.   Perhaps deploying energy efficient grids, sharing under-used
computational facilities, or utilizing virtual computing is a better answer
than building a physical cyber-infrastructure facility at every campus.

We also need to address the ongoing proliferation of computer clusters
throughout various computer departments. Unfortunately most of these
departments do not pay for the power and cooling costs associated with these
facilities and so do not appreciate their true impact on the overall energy
use of the university or the associated carbon emissions.  As I mentioned on
this blog before using Amazon's EC2/S3 service in many cases can be cheaper
than the power costs alone of a modern computational cluster, never mind the
operational and overhead costs of operating such a facility.

This is where regional and national research networks can play an important
role. There are now many carbon offset companies who will audit programs
that are designed to reduce carbon emissions. They will also broker payment
of real dollars for the carbon reductions that result from the program.  If
an organization setups a tele-commuting program and demonstrate real and
auditable reduction in carbon emissions they can earn revenue through the
sale of carbon offsets to energy companies and other organizations.  A good
example is where IBM is working with a carbon offset company which is
offering up to $1 million in carbon offsets for organizations to move away
from their physical servers to high energy efficiency virtual servers
operated by IBM.

R&E networks are ideally positioned to negotiate and implement these carbon
offsetting solutions. Network organizations are essential for implementing
any carbon offset strategy.  As well the carbon impact of an optical R&E
network is miniscule compared to the carbon footprint of many high
performance computers and other facilities.  The more we can use network
bits and bandwidth for advanced science instead of physical facilities the
greater the potential for earning valuable offset dollars (and I would argue
the better the science community will be served).

Another potential carbon offset revenue opportunity is with distance
learning and tele-medicine. Although the jury is still out on the
pedagogical value of distance learning, encouraging students to undertake
some of their course program work at home can be just as effective as
tele-commuting in terms of earning carbon offset dollars.  The same goes for
tele-medicine.  If companies can earn carbon offset dollars to implement
tele-commuting programs, universities and R&E networks should be able to
earn carbon offsets for offering distance learning and tele-medicine
programs. (But as I argued in previous posts, rather than exchanging dollars
in terms of carbon offsets, I would recommend exchanging other "zero carbon"
awards such as offering participating students free eTextbooks, free music
video, etc)

Finally R&E optical networks have an important role in redefining the entire
value chain of the network itself. Many R&E networks are largely
underutilized in terms of traditional measures of traffic volumes etc.
Given these traffic volumes (and slowing growth) it would have been far
cheaper in some cases for universities or funding agencies to purchase
managed bandwidth from the carriers rather than build their own R&E
networks.

But nobody yet has measured the carbon impact of these various optical,
wavelength and customer owned networks. I would argue that in fact the
carbon footprint of dark fiber, wavelengths and customer controlled network
with optical switches is significantly less than a traditional carrier with
expensive high end switches and (especially) routers which collectively
consume the power of a small nuclear reactor.  British Telecom for example
has announced an initiative to use renewable energy sources as it is one of
the biggest consumers of energy in the UK.

Instead of measuring the value of a network in terms of "bits per second",
we instead should be using "bits per carbon".  And while the utilization of
R&E network may be low by traditional measurement standards of "bps" its
impact on the environment may be significantly less when measured by "bpc"
compared to a commercial network. And once again, the R&E networks can help
develop a new business model through carbon offset trading by demonstrating
that an optical lightpath mesh network has significantly less of a carbon
footprint than a traditional electronic routed network. 

An even more interesting and radical concept is to replace expensive
electricity lines with optical networks.  Instead of "wheeling" expensive
power to physical servers at universities we can instead "wheel" inexpensive
bits between virtual servers, grids located at renewable energy sites around
the world.

For example the global community of optical research networks (GLIF) could
build a "follow the sun" grid infrastructure.  Solar powered high
performance computing facilities could be located at remote desert locations
throughout the world. But these systems would not be connected to any
electrical grid, and instead be linked by a global high speed optical
network.  As the sun starts to set on any given HPC site, the currently
running jobs and OS images would immediately transferred over the optical
network to the next HPC site that is just starting to come active with the
rising sun. 

Bottom line is that I believe research and education networks can play
important leadership role in defining these new business and network models
related to trading "bits and bandwidth for carbon". They could also be
working with universities to freeze, if not decrease, the carbon output of
these institutions. To my mind universities should at the forefront in our
society in finding solutions and new business models to address global
warming. At least they should not be the worst offenders in terms of all
these high carbon emission cyber-infrastructure facilities that are now
being deployed at our campuses.


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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.


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