The Energy Consumption of TCP

In this paper, our objective is to experimentally evaluate how the incoming and outgoing traffic patterns provided by the TCP protocol impact on the energy efficiency of a networked device under a number of realistic scenarios. To this purpose, we set up a complex testbed that allowed us to perform a huge number of measurements on energy- and network-performance indexes on a state-of-the-art PC with power management capabilities, and the Linux operating system. The performed measurements and collected results gave us the chance not only (i) to provide a complete energy profiling of TCP connections, but also (ii) to analyze into detail the role of underlying network protocols and (iii) to clearly identify specific situations where current network protocols may trigger high inefficiencies in networked hosts.