CBET-EPSRC: TECAN - Telemetry- Enabled Carbon Aware Networking

Although there are many contributing factors to climate change, energy production and consumption has one of the most direct impacts on the environment. A significant portion of these impacts can be attributed to computer networks, with some reports estimating that they consume 1.5x the energy of all data centers. However, in contrast to other large scale computing infrastructures, accounting for the carbon emissions of the networks is extremely hard. A traffic flow can cross multiple administrative domains in different regions of the world, be processed in devices powered by different energy sources, and share energy consumption with tens of thousands of other traffic flows. The goal of this project is to quantify, and subsequently reduce, the carbon emissions of computer networks. This project has a research agenda that will: (1) identify metrics that cover the end-to-end environmental cost of data transmission; (2) leverage programmable network elements to collect and report metrics by developing novel carbon-intelligent network telemetry solutions; and (3) design novel, carbon-aware network routing algorithms that utilize the measurements. Overall, the project targets to enable accurate accounting of computer networks' carbon emissions and develop novel routing algorithms to minimize the carbon emissions of the Internet, combating climate change. If successful, the project will help communication providers to minimize their carbon emissions, enable policy makers to reliably check that companies meet governments' net-zero goals, and allow consumers to choose communications and ICT providers based on their sustainability claims. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.