Five ways to move toward sustainable, eco-friendly networking

[Cherie_Martin]

Sustainable IT isn't just a buzzword—it's a crucial element of the overarching sustainability mission and strategy of a large and growing number of companies. Embracing eco-friendly goals and policies for your network starts with a few key steps that not only benefit the planet but can also enhance your operational efficiency. Here's how you can power up your network sustainability.

Sustainable networking is an approach that focuses on reducing the amount of equipment, energy, and resources consumed over time by the networking infrastructure, including wireless access points and switches. The end goal is to minimize the carbon footprint and environmental impact of the networking devices, while maintaining optimal performance.

Sustainable networking is no longer just a nice-to-have. It is becoming a requisite for an organization’s overall IT efficiency. Areas of focus for sustainability in networking include everything from monitoring energy efficiency to lifecycle management to building sustainable data centers. Virtualization and cloud can also enable resource consolidation. Even choosing network equipment incorporating eco-friendly materials, such as recyclable plastics and non-toxic components, is a vital path to sustainable networking.

Sustainability is a complex topic

At HPE Aruba Networking, we strive to make it easier for our customers to work toward their sustainability goals for networking. But you can only manage what you can measure and getting data from your devices can be quite complicated.

The IEEE recommends studying the energy consumption behavior of network devices, such as wireless access points, before focusing on energy-saving methods. Doing so allows IT departments to identify the factors that affect energy usage and explore choices for future wireless LAN deployments.

It is also important to consider the other ways networking technology can help you lower your carbon footprint as you build out your sustainable IT plan. Network power management and control and connectivity for environmental controls can also drive efficiencies that minimize the impact of your technology investments.

Kickstarting network sustainability

To help move your plan forward, let’s take a quick look at five best practices to consider.

1. Estimate expected lifecycle carbon footprint

A common customer request is to understand the carbon footprint of the technology they currently use, as well as the components they plan to buy. Knowing the carbon footprint of your network is the first step toward understanding how to reduce it.

IT managers should think about the trio of related action items in this area: measure, monitor, and control. Measure includes gathering the estimated carbon footprint. Monitor includes having visibility into real-time power consumption during operation, and control includes actively optimizing power consumption in periods of underutilization.

To help customers estimate the lifecycle carbon footprint of network components, HPE Aruba Networking recently commissioned an in-depth study of our top-selling access point models with a mission to calculate the average product lifecycle carbon footprint. This lifecycle assessment study included raw material extraction, manufacturing and assembly of the parts, transportation, use, and end-of-life treatment cycle phases.

The results of this study are publicly available, so you can check out the data for your HPE devices on our HPE Sustainable IT page. Switches are also being modeled and are continually being added to the HPE Power Advisor tool as new data becomes available.

2. Accurately observe and monitor

Having the right tools to identify inefficiencies should be a vital piece of your sustainability strategy, and HPE has made incredible progress in this area. The HPE Aruba Networking team has been partnering closely with the HPE GreenLake platform team to make power consumption data visible in the HPE Sustainability Insight Center (SIC), which allows our customers to observe and monitor energy consumption over time. This feature takes carbon footprint estimations to the next level, allowing customers to see power consumption in real-time through the SIC.

Today, customers using HPE Aruba Networking Central can view the real-time power consumption of their wireless access points through the SIC. Additionally, the SIC provides a full view of energy consumption across all assets, including HPE access points, compute, storage, and OpsRamp-monitored devices.

3. Control energy consumption with smart features

Innovative features that give customers the power to lower energy consumption are also incredibly valuable. The recently released dynamic power-save mode on HPE access points is an automated feature that uses AI to determine when to put eligible access points into hibernation to save power during periods of low activity.

This feature allows IT administrators to identify and capitalize on opportunities to optimize power consumption based on the unique usage patterns of your networks. Conveniently, IT administrators have the option to empower the system to make automated adjustments or implement them manually. This feature is available to HPE Aruba Networking Central customers using AOS 10.

4. Optimize network design with the latest energy-efficient components

Network manufacturers, including HPE Aruba Networking, have made great strides in sustainability in Wi-Fi 7 devices, adding features that can lead to lower energy consumption compared to older network technologies. Devices using older Wi-Fi standards lack advanced energy-saving features and spend more time in active mode, which leads to higher energy consumption. In addition, the data rates of these older Wi-Fi technologies are lower, resulting in longer transmission times and increased power usage.

The Wi-Fi 6 standard set the stage for impressive energy efficiency, and Wi-Fi 7 takes it to the next level. With next-gen features including Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and enhanced Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS), Wi-Fi 7 delivers greater energy savings, making your network greener and more efficient.

Another way for businesses to support their sustainability goals is by extending the use of the network to onboard Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors to create smart, automated buildings. IoT devices can be used to monitor physical environments and controls, including building occupancy, lighting, heating, and water usage. These devices can help you dynamically automate office spaces and meeting rooms. To help accelerate our customers’ time to value of their IoT investments, we designed our Wi-Fi 7 access points to be a platform for IoT, incorporating additional memory and processing power for application containers, local analytics processing, and faster delivery of business-critical data used to react faster to changing environmental conditions. 

And when considering product design, we can’t forget packaging composition and configuration. HPE not only has a keen focus on using recycled and recyclable materials in packaging, but the company also has dedicated resources focused on minimizing the amount of packaging, expanding the number eco-pack configurations, and maximizing the percentage of ocean-bound shipments.

5. Embrace the circular economy

In addition to taking advantage of the increased efficiency of new technology standards, businesses can improve their carbon footprint in other ways. Circular economy practices give viable products a new life through repurposing them in the market. HPE Financial Services specializes in helping our customers reclaim some of the residual value of retired technology while refreshing and redirecting those assets to new opportunities. For products that have effectively reached the end of their usable life, HPE offers recycling services in many countries where we conduct business.

One HPE customer leading the way using circular economy practices and IoT applications is the global engineering and manufacturing enterprise Danfoss. With decarbonization at the core of its mission, Danfoss creates innovative solutions that span energy generation and delivery, cold chains, automotive applications, industrial equipment, integrated building controls, and more. Learn more about how Danfoss advances sustainability from edge to cloud.

Supercharge sustainability

My final advice is this: Sustainable networking takes effort, but the payoff is huge, and HPE Aruba Networking is here to help. Embrace eco-friendly practices to align with your company's sustainability goals, boost your overall network efficiency, and cut costs in energy usage. It’s time to power up your network sustainability plan—and contribute to a healthier planet.

Resources

Modernize your network and lower your carbon footprint

Accelerate time to value and support sustainability goals for IoT

HPE Aruba Networking 730 Series Wi-Fi 7 Campus Access Points

Refresh your network securely and sustainably with HPE GreenLake for Networking