An Electricity-Cost-Aware Internet Routing Scheme

Al writes "Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Akamai have developed a network-routing scheme that could save 'internet-scale' companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft million of dollars each year by moving data to locations with the best electricity prices for a particular day. The scheme simply considers both the most efficient routing path for data and the potential cost savings of routing it somewhere farther away. The researchers studied price fluctuations at locations across the country and used data from Akamai caching servers to test the idea out. In the best possible scenario — which would require more efficient servers — they estimate that companies could save as much as 40% on the electricity bills (tens of millions each year). Google already operates at least one datacenter that shuts down when temperatures get too high. Is this the next logical step for internet computing?"

Prior art

[An dochasac]

At least this idea [sun.com] was previously published at Research Disclosure, a site intended as an inexpensive way to log prior art. It is the next logical step and I'm glad to see that companies are moving in that direction.

Re:Low Datacenter Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

why are there not more data centers in Iceland?

Why not Greenland? The climate there is actually colder than Iceland, and it has a more ecologically friendly name.

Re:Low Datacenter Costs

[bumburumbi]

With only two cables connecting Iceland to the Ineternet, companies have not been eager to set up shop here. FARICE-1 [slashdot.org] is fairly modern (2004), CANTAT-3 [slashdot.org] is rather old (1994) and a new cable, DANICE [slashdot.org] is being built. For many companies the risk of one or more of these cables being down is to large to offset the cheap electricity and cool weather.