Power and bandwith

[hlavacs]

Hi,



being part of a scientific research project we measured the power consumption of a 3Com 3824 to see how power consumption depends on the switched bandwidth. The results were quite surprising - between 10 and 1000 kbit/s, the power decreases according to (BW in kbit/s):

power = 45.9 - 0.0258 log BW

i.e., the dependence is very small and negative. From 1000 kbit/s to 500 Mbit/s it increases again:

power = 45.6 + 0.016 log BW

So there is a minimal power consumption at 1Mbit/s, but the overall consumption only slightly depends on the traffic. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Why is there a minimum? Why is the dependence very weak on the switched traffic?

I am thankfull for any idea, comment, hint on this.

Best regards

Helmut