Evaluating energy savings in WoL-enabled networks of PCs

Abstract

In this paper we present EnergySave, a smart energy-saving system that, by leveraging the consolidated WoL (Wake on LAN) technology, allows the remote wake-up of PCs from a centralized management server, providing easy and secure power management capabilities for local or remote IP-based networks of personal computers (PCs). We also present a lightweight web-based platform implementing the remote management interface as less intrusively as possible. Finally, we model the mathematical saving functions to be used in order to evaluate through simulation the amount of potential energy savings, and hence the whole framework effectiveness, both in the general case and in a real case scenario. Results show that significant savings are achievable provided that the hardware supports the Wake-on-LAN specifications and that proper configuration of the Web server is set-up, allowing the WoL magic packet to travel to the destination hosts and wake them up only when they are really needed.