RFC 9547

Report from the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems, 2022

📅 published February 2024, from ietf

RFC 9547 🎀 Report from the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems, 2022

Okay bestie, first the paperwork 📋✨ This doc was written by J. Arkko, C. S. Perkins, and S. Krishnan, and it's published by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). It's Informational (not a standard, just a permanent record 🦋), with ISSN 2070-1721, and the date is February 2024. The header has no Obsoletes or Updates line, so it isn't replacing or amending anything.

Abstract 🌍

Internet communications and applications have both environmental costs and benefits, and the IAB ran an online workshop in December 2022 to explore and understand these impacts 💚

The workshop's job was to talk through the impacts and what the industry needs right now, and to figure out where things can get better and what future work to do 🔍 A big goal was to get more people paying attention to this topic and to bring together a diverse stakeholder community to chat about it together 🫶

Heads up: this document is a report on what happened at the workshop. The views and positions in it belong to the workshop participants, and they do not necessarily reflect IAB views and positions 🙈

Status of This Memo 📜

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification. It's published for informational purposes only 🌸

It's a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and holds information the IAB thought was valuable enough to keep on the record forever 🗂️ It represents the consensus of the IAB. Documents the IAB approves for publication aren't candidates for any level of Internet Standard. Check Section 2 of RFC 7841 if you want the details 💅

For the current status, any errata, and how to send feedback, go to https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9547 ✨

Copyright Notice ©️

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the date of publication. Please read those carefully, because they describe your rights and restrictions for this document 📖

Table of Contents 📚

   1.  Introduction
     1.1.  About the Contents of This Workshop Report
   2.  Scope
     2.1.  Practical Arrangements
   3.  Workshop Topics and Discussion
     3.1.  The Big Picture
     3.2.  Understanding the Impacts
     3.3.  Improvements
     3.4.  Next Steps
       3.4.1.  Overall Strategy
       3.4.2.  Improvements
       3.4.3.  Actions
   4.  Feedback
   5.  Security Considerations
   6.  IANA Considerations
   7.  Position Papers
   8.  Program Committee
   9.  Informative References
   Appendix A.  Workshop Participants
   IAB Members at the Time of Approval
   Acknowledgments
   Authors' Addresses

1. Introduction 🌸

The IAB ran an online workshop in December 2022 to explore and understand the environmental impacts of the Internet 🌍

So the vibe is: Internet communications and applications have both environmental costs and benefits 💅 On the good side, they can shrink society's footprint. Virtual meetings can replace physical travel, which is lowkey iconic 🦋 But the Internet can also be an enabler for buying more physical stuff, like by making commerce easier 🛍️

Also, Internet apps don't come for free. The Internet runs on systems that need energy and raw materials to be made and to run ⚡ The environmental benefits probably outweigh that resource use in many cases, but the Internet industry has a responsibility to make sure that use is minimized and optimized. Honestly, in lots of cases it's already an economic necessity because of operating costs 💰 And since plenty of consumers, businesses, and civil societies care a lot about environmental impact, there's a clear demand for Internet services with minimal impact too 🌱

The role of the workshop was to discuss the Internet's environmental impact and what the industry needs, and to figure out where to improve and what to work on next 🔍 Again, the big goal was to get more attention on this and gather a diverse group of stakeholders. This report sums up the workshop's inputs and discussions 📝

The workshop got lots of position paper submissions. Of those, 26 were accepted and published to kick off discussion 🔥 There were active discussions both at the meeting and on the workshop mailing list, with 73 participants altogether 🙌

The main overall takeaway? Honestly, how much interest and urgency there is on this topic, from engineers, researchers, and businesses alike 😭✨

The workshop discussions and conclusions are in Section 3. You can find the position papers and links to recordings of the sessions at https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/e-impact/. Presentations and related materials are on the IETF Datatracker at https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/eimpactws/meetings/ 🎀

After the workshop, the IETF keeps talking about general topics and specific proposals on a new mailing list, the e-impact list (e-impact@ietf.org). You can subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/e-impact 💌

The IETF is also discussing improvements for some specific situations. One example is the Time-Variant Routing (TVR) proposal, which can help optimize connectivity with systems that are only periodically on or reachable, like satellites 🛰️ We expect more proposals down the road 🧚

1.1. About the Contents of This Workshop Report

The IAB holds occasional workshops to think about long-term issues and strategies for the Internet, and to suggest future directions for the Internet architecture 🔭 This long-term planning is a complement to the ongoing engineering work done by IETF working groups, not a replacement 🫶

Also, the content of this report comes from what workshop participants presented and from notes taken during the discussions, without interpretation or validation 📒 So it follows the flow and dialog of the workshop and records a few next steps and actions, but it doesn't try to decide or record consensus on any of them 🙈

2. Scope 🎯

Environmental impact assessments and improvements are broad topics. They range from technical questions all the way to economics, business decisions, and policy 🌈

The technical, standards, and research communities can help make sure we really understand the environmental impact of the Internet and its applications 🧠 They can also help design the right tools to keep building and improving every part of the Internet. That includes meeting new functional needs, making operations easier, improving performance or efficiency, and reducing environmental impact in other ways 💅

These were the topics the workshop was expected to cover:

The direct environmental impacts of the Internet. This includes, but isn't limited to, energy use by Internet systems themselves (the network equipment plus its power and cooling infrastructure), energy use by relevant end-user devices, and resources needed to manufacture those devices, or impacts across the whole life cycle of Internet systems. It also covered how those impacts break down across system components and operations, and predictions about future trends based on changed usage patterns and emerging technologies 🔋
The indirect environmental impacts of the Internet, meaning its effects on society through enabling communications, virtual services, or global commerce 🌐
Sharing information about relevant measurement metrics and data, and figuring out where we need more metrics or measurements 📊
The need for improvements or new associated functionality 🛠️
Sharing information about the societal, business, and regulatory situation to spot areas of opportunity 🏛️
Identifying areas where further technical work would be most impactful 🎯
Specific improvement proposals 💡
Past work in the IETF, IRTF, and IAB in this area, and the status of that work 📚
Observed user behaviors as they relate to environmental impacts 👀

They expected the discussions to connect analysis of the issues (for example, the scale of energy consumption or carbon footprint) to industry needs (for example, deployment opportunities) and to solutions 🔗

Business and societal policy questions were only in scope insofar as they told participants about the context we're in. What those policies should be was not for the workshop to decide or even extensively discuss 🙅‍♀️ The scope also excluded how the technical community works and meets, like whether meetings should be in person or hybrid. (Side note: the workshop itself was run as an online meeting 💻)

2.1. Practical Arrangements

The IAB discussed a potential workshop in this area during its May 2022 retreat 🏕️ A call for position papers went out in August 2022. Position papers were due at the end of October, and that deadline was later extended by one week ⏰

As mentioned, the workshop was run online, with four half-day sessions plus email discussions and the position papers the participants submitted 💻✨

All in all, 73 people took part in at least one session. Participation was by invitation only, based on position paper submissions 💌

Every submission was read by at least three members of the program committee, and acceptance decisions were sent back to the authors. Review comments went to authors for information, and some papers were revised before the workshop 📝

The program committee decided that, because of the interest and the different areas of expertise, all co-authors would be invited, and most of them came 🙌 The committee also invited a handful of extra participants who were seen as adding valuable input. Similar to previous IAB workshops, program committee members and members of the IAB and IESG were offered the chance to join, even if they hadn't submitted a position paper 🫶

The IETF Secretariat and communications staff gave practical support throughout. They sent announcements, maintained the workshop web page with the position papers, set up mailing lists, tracked submissions, helped with blog article submissions, and more 💖

3. Workshop Topics and Discussion 💜

The meeting part of the workshop was split into four sessions:

The first session was about the big picture and the relationships between different aspects of sustainability (see Section 3.1) 🌍
The second session focused on what we know and don't know, and how we can measure environmental impacts (see Section 3.2) 📏
The third session was about potential improvements (see Section 3.3) 🛠️
The final fourth session was about conclusions and next steps (see Section 3.4) 🏁

3.1. The Big Picture 🌍✨

Okay bestie, this session was all about the big picture: how the Internet affects the rest of society 🌸 We also talked about what the workshop was trying to achieve.

The session kicked off with a chat about everything this topic actually involves. We also looked at how the IETF has tackled it in the past 🦋

The discussions gave off major urgency energy 🔥 Continuous improvement matters a lot, like, an incremental change every year is needed for bigger savings by the end of the decade. We also kept coming back to how climate change hits different communities around the world, and it often hits them unfairly 💔 Finally, we focused on being aware of our carbon footprint instead of only looking at energy consumption, because the carbon intensity of energy sources varies a lot 🌈

The starting observation was that the issue is way bigger than Internet technology alone 😭 It touches every part of society, including stuff like (in)equality, externalized costs, and justice. Another big takeaway was that improvements come in lots of forms, and there is no silver bullet 💅 Bringing people with different backgrounds into the same room helped us see how everyone approaches the topic from a different angle. None of those angles are wrong, but none of them is the only one to focus on either 🫶 Only the combined effects of complementary efforts can deliver the level of change we need.

Some of the useful tools for tackling this included technical solutions, but also solidarity, aiming for sufficiency, and awareness ✨ It's important not to stand still waiting for the perfect solution. Renewable energy and carbon awareness were seen as part of the answer, but not enough on their own 🍓

As an example of how many different angles and improvements there are for environmental issues, Figure 1 sorts the areas that the workshop position papers landed in 🧚

          +---- Actors & organizations
          |                                 +---- Avoidance
          +---- Benefits to other fields    |
          |                                 +---- User behavior
          +---- Society, awareness, &       |
          |     justice                     +---- Implementation
          |                                 |
Workshop -+- Improvements ------------------+
          |                                 |
          |     Understanding &             |       +---- Data plane
          +---- Measurements                |       |
                      |                 Protocols --+---- Routing
                      |                             |
                      +---- Energy                  +---- Edge cloud
                      |                             |
                      +---- Carbon                  +---- Mobile
                                                    |
                                                    +---- Metrics
                                                    |
                                                    +---- Other

              Figure 1: Position Paper Submission Topics

Some goals for the IETF should include these 👑

Connecting the IETF with others. The issue is so broad that it's really hard for one Standards Development Organization (SDO) to make a big impact or even see the whole picture 🥺 Working with others is necessary, and we'll need to understand the situation beyond technology too.
Continuous improvement. It's important that the IETF (among others) sets itself on a continuous improvement cycle 🔄 No single improvement will change the overall situation enough, but over a longer stretch of time, even smaller changes every year add up to larger improvements.
Finding the right targets for improvements in the Internet. These perhaps shouldn't be defined only by bigger speeds or more capacity. They should be about increased usefulness to society and declining emissions from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector 🌿
Specifying what research needs to be done. That means figuring out where extra knowledge would help us find better improvements 🔍 For instance, we don't know enough about environmental impacts beyond energy, like the natural resources used for manufacturing or the use of water 💧 Carbon awareness and measurements across domains are also poorly understood right now. And business model impacts, such as the role of advertising in the Internet's carbon footprint, deserve more study 👀

3.2. Understanding the Impacts 📊

The second session was about what we know, what we don't know, and how we can measure environmental impacts 🧐

The first presentation focused on narrowing down the lower and upper limits of the Internet's energy use, and on putting some common but wrong claims into context 🙅‍♀️ We also discussed the energy consumption of the ICT sector and how it compares to some other industries, like aviation ✈️

Digging deeper into the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the ICT sector, we talked about how the impact gets split between networks, data centers, and user devices. User devices seem to contribute the biggest fraction of the impact 📱 Also, while a lot of the energy studies and discussions have focused on data centers, some studies suggested that data center energy usage is still a small fraction of energy use compared to residential and commercial buildings 🏢

There were also more discussions, both during the presentations and in the hallway chats, about how the press and media cover potential environmental technologies. The overall vibe from participants was that there were a lot of sensational headlines that weren't really backed by measurements from industry and academia, and they were full of errors 🙃 Some of these media reports were off by quite a bit, sometimes even by an order of magnitude (for example, confusing MBps vs. Mbps in calculations) 😱 The potential harm of widely circulating misinformation was noted: it can get in the way of realistic efforts to reduce carbon emissions 🚫

In the rest of the session, we looked at additional data collected from operators, as well as factors that may drive energy consumption depending on the circumstances 📈 For instance, these include peak capacity and energy proportionality.

If energy consumption is minimally affected by an offered load, then the ratio of peak capacity to typical usage becomes a critical factor in energy consumption 👀

On the other hand, systems with energy proportionality scale their resource and energy consumption more dynamically based on the offered load ⚡ The lack of energy proportionality in many parts of the network infrastructure was noted, along with the potential gains if it can be improved 💫

We also saw observations showing that energy consumption grew as a step function once peak capacity was reached (even instantaneously). Additional capacity then got built up through network upgrades to handle these new peaks 🏗️ This led to an overall higher baseline energy consumption, even when average demand didn't change that much 😤 So the ability to shift load to reduce peak demand was highlighted as a potential way to delay consumption increases when energy proportionality is lacking ⏳

3.3. Improvements 🛠️

The third session was about potential improvements 💖

As noted earlier, there are many different types of improvements. In the discussion, we focused mostly on protocol aspects, and we looked at metrics, telemetry, routing, multicast, and data encoding formats 🧩

The two opening presentations focused on metrics and telemetry, with the premise that visibility is a very important first step. (This was paraphrasing Peter Drucker's mantra: "You cannot improve what you don't measure.") 📏 There was a discussion of the scopes of emissions, and from a networking vendor's perspective, it seemed that directly controlled emissions and emissions from purchased energy are easy to measure. Emissions from across the entire value chain, though, can be much larger 😳 So it seemed important that networking vendors put effort into helping their customers measure and mitigate their environmental impact too 🤝 Standardized metrics were a very clear need, since they help avoid proprietary, redundant, and even contradictory metrics across vendors 🙌

The initial and near-term focus was on metrics and techniques related to the energy consumption of the networking devices themselves 🔌 The longer-term focus can go into topics much further removed from the IETF circular design, such as packaging, so we can form a more holistic picture 🖼️ The overall feeling was that the topics of metrics, telemetry, and management are quite specific and could be worked on in the IETF in the near term 🎀

The next part of the discussion highlighted the need to understand the trade-offs involved in changing forwarding decisions, like increased jitter and stretch 🌀 Jitter is about delay fluctuation between packets in a stream [RFC4689]. Stretch is defined as the difference between the absolute shortest path traffic could take through the network and the path the traffic actually takes [RFC7980]. Impacts on jitter and stretch point to the need for careful design and analysis of improvements from a system perspective. That way the intended effect actually reaches across the entire system, and isn't just a local optimum 🎯

We also talked about the potentially significant impact of using efficient binary formats instead of textual representations when carrying data in protocols, provided the network exhibits energy proportionality 💜 This is something that can be adopted fairly easily in new protocols as they're being developed. In fact, some recently finished protocols, such as HTTP/2, have already chosen to use this technique [RFC9113]. General-purpose binary formats, such as Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) [RFC8949], are also available for use 🧚‍♀️

There were also some interesting discussions about whether multicast helps or hurts the energy efficiency of communications 🤔 Some studies and simulations showed the potential gains, but those had to be balanced against some well-known barriers to multicast deployment 🚧 We also heard from a leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) operator about their views on multicast and how it relates to media usage and consumption models 📺 The potential negative effects of multicast in wireless and constrained networks came up in hallway conversations too 📶 Overall, the conclusion was that multicast can potentially provide some savings, but only in some specific scenarios 🌟

For all improvements, people kept highlighting the importance of metrics, so we can be sure changes actually lead to a meaningful reduction in the overall carbon footprint of systems 🫧

3.4. Next Steps 🚀

The fourth and final session was about conclusions and next steps 💅 This section highlights some of those conclusions.

3.4.1. Overall Strategy ✨

okay so while only a few things are easy 💅, the road ahead for making improvements actually looks pretty clear 🗺️: we need to keep improving our understanding of the environmental impact and have a continuous cycle of improvements that lead not just to better energy efficiency but to reduced overall carbon emissions 🌍. The IETF can play an important part in this process, but of course there are other aspects beyond protocols 🫶.

On understanding our environmental impact, the first step is better awareness of sustainability issues in general, which helps us figure out where our issues are 👀. The second step is being willing to understand in detail what the causes and relationships are within our issues. What parts, components, or behaviors in the network cause what kinds of impacts? An overall drive in society to report and improve environmental impacts can be super helpful in creating that willingness to get this information 🧚.

On establishing a continuous cycle of improvements, the ability to understand where we are, make improvements, and then see the impact of those improvements is of course central 🔄. But obviously the key questions are what the potential improvements are and how we can accelerate them 🚀. It should be noted that quick, large changes are not likely 💀. But a continuous stream of smaller changes can create a large impact over a longer period of time 🌸.

One of the key realizations from this workshop was that the problem to be solved is very large and complex; therefore, there is no single solution that fixes everything 😭. There are some solutions that could help in the near term and others that would only show benefits over longer periods, but they are both necessary 🎀.

One further challenge is that due to the size and complexity of the problem, there are likely varying opinions on what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) need to be measured and improved 🙈.

3.4.2. Improvements 🛠️

In looking at potential improvements, it is essential that any associated trade-offs be understood (note that not all improvements do indeed entail a trade-off) 🧠.

Importantly, the role of the Internet in improving other areas of society must not be diminished 💜. Understanding the costs and benefits requires taking a holistic view of energy consumption, focusing not just on the carbon footprint of the Internet but of the broader systems in which it is used. For instance, discussion in session three revealed how some changes might impact latency and jitter. Given that these characteristics are important factors in how virtual meetings are perceived by potential participants, it is important that the performance of networks satisfy these participants at a level such that they are willing to use them over other potentially more environmentally harmful methods, such as travel. Focusing solely on the carbon footprint of the Internet, or solely on the carbon footprint of travel, risks missing the bigger picture potential savings 👯.

Note that, while shifting to virtual meetings is a common example of how the carbon footprint could be decreased, it is important to consider different use cases, some of which may not be as obvious to us human users as meetings are. Improvements may bring different or even larger impacts in other situations, e.g., Internet-connected electronics might benefit from different characteristics than human users, e.g., with regards to support for intermittent connectivity 🔌.

The relationships between different system components and the impact of various detailed design choices in networks are not always apparent 🕸️. A local change in one node may have an impact in other nodes. When considering environmental sustainability, in most cases, the overall system impact is what counts more than local impacts. Of course, other factors, such as device battery life and availability of power, may result in other preferences, such as optimizing for low-power usage of end-user devices, even at the cost of increases elsewhere 🔋.

In terms of useful tools for building improvements, the following were highlighted in discussions:

Measures beyond protocol design, such as implementations or renewable energy use. Not everything is about protocols 💅.
Metrics, measurements, and data are very beneficial. Carbon-aware metrics in particular would be very useful. All additional information makes us more aware of what the environmental impacts are, and it also enables optimization, adjustments based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), carbon-directed computing and networking tools, and so on 📊.
It would be beneficial to be able to provide various systems a more dynamic ability to slow down and sleep 😴. Awareness of energy availability and type would also allow us to employ time and place shifting for reducing carbon impacts ⏰.
When we design systems, paying attention to the used data formats may pay off significantly, as argued in [Moran] 📦.
There's a new possible opportunity for deploying multicast as well [Navarre] 📡.
Designing systems for energy-constrained situations may actually make the resulting systems work well in several environments 🌈.

3.4.3. Actions 📝

The workshop discussed a number of possible actions. These actions are not about how to take specific technical solutions forward but rather about how to discuss the topic going forward or what technical areas to focus on 🧩:

We need to continue the discussion -- not all questions are answered. Additional discussion within the IETF will be needed. Continuing to connect the IETF with others in society and other SDOs around this topic is also useful 🗣️.
It is useful to find a role and a scope for IETF work in this area. The IETF will not develop alternative energy sources, work on social issues, or have detailed discussions about implementation strategies or electronics design. However, the IETF has a role in measurement mechanisms, protocol design, and standards -- but of course, activities in this role need to be aware of other aspects, such as implementation strategies 🎯.
Increase our understanding of the environmental impacts of Internet technologies. One discussion topic that arose during the workshop was whether each new RFC should dedicate a section to discuss these impacts. No conclusion was drawn about the way to document these in RFCs, but it is clear that the IETF community will need to understand the environmental issues better. (Perhaps in addition to learning about the actual issues, guidelines for analyzing protocols with regards to their impacts could be useful.) 🔍
IETF activities on specific technologies are already ongoing or starting; for example, metrics are being discussed in the Network Management Research Group [NMRG], the Operations and Management Area Working Group [OPSAWG], and the new Time-Variant Routing Working Group [TVRWG]. It may also be useful to start with the low-hanging fruits, such as:
- Focusing on improving energy proportionality and the consequent use of efficient data formats.
- Avoiding crypto assets -- such as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies.
- Being able to carry information that needs to be shared for the purposes of enabling load and time shifting.
Help initiate research activities that address some of the issues, such as broader gathering and sharing of measurement data, analysis of this data, and examination of business-related issues, such as how peering or advertising impacts sustainability. In addition, there may be a need to look at research for specific areas of improvements that are promising but not ready for standards discussion 🔬.

In summary, the goals that the IETF should have include:

Full understanding of the Internet's environmental impact.
Continuous improvement of our technology.
Launching research-relevant activities.

To support these goals, the IAB has created the e-impact program [E-IMPACT] as a venue for further discussions concerning environmental impacts and sustainability of Internet technology 🌱.

4. Feedback 💌

The organizers received generally positive feedback about the workshop 🥰.

One practical issue from the organizer's point of view was that, due to the extension of the deadline, the final submissions and paper reviews collided in part with the IETF 115 meeting. This led to it being very difficult for the program committee and practical organization staff to find time for the activity. We recommend avoiding such collisions in the future 📅.

5. Security Considerations 🔐

The workshop itself did not address specific security topics. Of course, individual changes in Internet technology or operations that influence environmental impacts may also influence security aspects.

These need to be looked at for every proposed change. 🚨

Such influence on security may come in different forms. For instance:

A mechanism that makes energy consumption information available may be susceptible to tampering or providing false information. For example, in [McDaniel], the author argues that economics and history show that different players will attempt to cheat if a benefit can be accrued by doing so, e.g., by misreporting. As a result, sustainability measures and systems must be modeled as systems under threat 🕵️.
A mechanism that allows control of network elements for optimization purposes may be misused to cause denial-of-service or other types of attacks 💀.
Avoiding the use of crypto assets where other mechanisms suffice.
Streamlining what data is sent may improve privacy if less information is shared 🫣.

6. IANA Considerations 🦋

This document has no IANA actions.

7. Position Papers ✨

okay so these are the position papers that got submitted to the workshop, and the list is giving main character energy 💅🌸

Chris Adams, Stefano Salsano, Hesham ElBakoury: "Extending IPv6 to support Carbon Aware Networking" [Adams] 🌍
Per Anderson, Suresh Krishnan, Jan Lindblad, Snezana Mitrovic, Marisol Palmero, Esther Roure, Gonzalo Salgueiro: "Sustainability Telemetry" [Anderson] 📡
Jari Arkko, Nina Lövehagen, Pernilla Bergmark: "Environmental Impacts of the Internet: Scope, Improvements, and Challenges" [Arkko] 🦋
R. Bolla, R. Bruschi, F. Davoli, C. Lombardo, Beatrice Siccardi: "6Green: Green Technologies for 5/6G Service-Based Architectures" [Bolla] ⭐
Alexander Clemm, Lijun Dong, Greg Mirsky, Laurent Ciavaglia, Jeff Tantsura, Marie-Paule Odini: "Green Networking Metrics" [ClemmA] 📊
Alexander Clemm, Cedric Westphal, Jeff Tantsura, Laurent Ciavaglia, Marie-Paule Odini, Michael Welzl: "Challenges and Opportunities in Green Networking" [ClemmB] 🌱
Toerless Eckert, Mohamed Boucadair, Pascal Thubert, Jeff Tantsura: "IETF and Energy - An Overview" [Eckert] ⚡
Greening of Streaming: "Tune In. Turn On. Cut Back. Finding the optimal streaming 'default' mode to increase energy efficiency, shift consumer expectations, and safeguard choice" [GOS] 📺
Romain Jacob: "Towards a power-proportional Internet" [Jacob] 🔥
Fieke Jansen and Maya Richman: "Environment, internet infrastructure, and digital rights" [Jansen] 🎀
Michael King, Suresh Krishnan, Carlos Pignataro, Pascal Thubert, Eric Voit: "On Principles for a Sustainability Stack" [King] 🧚
Suresh Krishnan, Carlos Pignataro: "Sustainability considerations for networking equipment" [Krishnan] 💜
Jukka Manner: "Sustainability Considerations" [Manner] 🫶
Vesna Manojlovic: "Internet Infrastructure and Climate Justice" [Manojlovic] 🌈
Mike Mattera: "Understanding the Full Emissions Impact from Internet Traffic" [Mattera] 👑
John Preuß Mattsson: "Environmental Impact of Crypto-Assets" [Mattsson] 🍓
Brendan Moran, Henk Birkholz, Carsten Bormann: "CBOR is Greener than JSON" [Moran] 💖
Louis Navarre, Franoçis Michel, Olivier Bonaventure: "It Is Time to Reconsider Multicast" [Navarre] 🦋
Bruce Nordman: "Applying Internet Architecture to Energy Systems" [Nordman] ✨
Alvaro Retana, Russ White, Manuel Paul: "A Framework and Requirements for Energy Aware Control Planes" [Retana] 🌸
Shayna Robinson, Remy Hellstern, Mariana Diaz: "Sea Change: Prioritizing the Environment in Internet Architecture" [Robinson] 🔥
Daniel Schien, Paul Shabajee, Chris Preist: "Rethinking Allocation in High-Baseload Systems: A Demand-Proportional Network Electricity Intensity Metric" [Schien] 💅
Eve M. Schooler, Rick Taylor, Noa Zilberman, Robert Soulé, Dawn Nafus, Rajit Manohar, Uri Cummings: "A Perspective on Carbon-aware Networking" [Schooler] 🙈
Selome Kostentinos Tesfatsion, Xuejun Cai, Arif Ahmed: "End-to-end Energy Efficiency at Service-level in Edge Cloud" [Kostentinos] 🧚
Pascal Thubert: "Digital Twin and Automation" [Thubert] 💜
Wim Vanderbauwhede: "Frugal Computing" [Vanderbauwhede] 🫶
Michael Welzl, Ozgu Alay, Peyman Teymoori, Safiqul Islam: "Reducing Green House Gas Emissions With Congestion Control" [Welzl] 🌍

8. Program Committee 💖

the program committee squad was:

Jari Arkko, Ericsson (program committee co-chair) 👑
Lars Eggert, Netapp (program committee co-chair) 👑
Luis M. Contreras, Telefónica 🌸
Toerless Eckert, Futurewei ⭐
Martin Flack, Akamai 🎀
Mike Mattera, Akamai 🦋
Colin Perkins, University of Glasgow 🌈
Barath Raghavan, USC 🔥
Daniel Schien, University of Bristol 💅
Eve M. Schooler, Intel 💜
Rick Taylor, Ori Industries 🍓
Jiankang Yao, CNNIC 🧚

9. Informative References ✨

Okay bestie, here's the whole reading list 📚 every source the report leans on, complete with authors, titles, and where to find them 🦋

[Adams] Adams, C., Salsano, S., and H. ElBakoury, "Extending IPv6 to support Carbon Aware Networking", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Anderson] Anderson, P., Krishnan, S., Lindblad, J., Mitrovic, S., Palmero, M., Roure, E., and G. Salgueiro, "Sustainability Telemetry", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Arkko] Arkko, J., Lövehagen, N., and P. Bergmark, "Environmental Impacts of the Internet: Scope, Improvements, and Challenges", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Bolla] Bolla, R., Bruschi, R., Davoli, F., Lombardo, C., and B. Siccardi, "6Green: Green Technologies for 5/6G Service-Based Architectures", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[ClemmA] Clemm, A., Dong, L., Mirsky, G., Ciavaglia, L., Tantsura, J., and M. Odini, "Green Networking Metrics", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[ClemmB] Clemm, A., Westphal, C., Tantsura, J., Ciavaglia, L., Odini, M., and M. Welzl, "Challenges and Opportunities in Green Networking", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[E-IMPACT] IAB, "Environmental Impacts of Internet Technology", IAB Program, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/eimpact>.

[Eckert] Eckert, T., Ed., Boucadair, M., Ed., Thubert, P., Tantsura, J., and C. Pignataro, "An Overview of Energy-related Effort within the IETF", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-eckert-ietf-and-energy-overview-06, 6 January 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eckert-ietf-and-energy-overview-06>.

[GOS] Greening of Streaming, "Tune In. Turn On. Cut Back. Finding the optimal streaming 'default' mode to increase energy efficiency, shift consumer expectations, and safeguard choice", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Jacob] Jacob, R., "Towards a power-proportional Internet", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Jansen] Jansen, F. and M. Richman, "Environment, internet infrastructure, and digital rights", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[King] King, M., Krishnan, S., Pignataro, C., Thubert, P., and E. Voit, "On Principles for a Sustainability Stack", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

[Kostentinos] Tesfatsion, S., Cai, X., and A. Ahmed, "End-to-end Energy Efficiency at Service-level in Edge Cloud", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Krishnan] Krishnan, S. and C. Pignataro, "Sustainability considerations for networking equipment", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Manner] Manner, J., "Sustainability Considerations", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Manojlovic] Manojlovic, V., "Internet Infrastructure and Climate Justice", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

[Mattera] Mattera, M., "Understanding the Full Emissions Impact from Internet Traffic", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

[Mattsson] Preuß Mattsson, J., "Environmental Impact of Crypto-Assets", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[McDaniel] McDaniel, P., "Sustainability is a Security Problem", ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), November 2022.

[Moran] Moran, B., Birkholz, H., and C. Bormann, "CBOR is Greener than JSON", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

[Navarre] Navarre, L., Michel, F., and O. Bonaventure, "It Is Time to Reconsider Multicast", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[NMRG] IRTF, "Network Management Research Group NMRG", IRTF Research Group, March 1999, <https://www.irtf.org/nmrg.html>.

[Nordman] Nordman, B., "Applying Internet Architecture to Energy Systems", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[OPSAWG] IETF, "Operations and Management Area Working Group (opsawg)", IETF Working Group, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/opsawg/about/>.

[Retana] Retana, A., White, R., and M. Paul, "A Framework for Energy Aware Control Planes", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-retana-rtgwg-eacp-07, 24 August 2023, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-retana-rtgwg-eacp-07>.

[RFC4689] Poretsky, S., Perser, J., Erramilli, S., and S. Khurana, "Terminology for Benchmarking Network-layer Traffic Control Mechanisms", RFC 4689, DOI 10.17487/RFC4689, October 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4689>.

[RFC7980] Behringer, M., Retana, A., White, R., and G. Huston, "A Framework for Defining Network Complexity", RFC 7980, DOI 10.17487/RFC7980, October 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7980>.

[RFC8949] Bormann, C. and P. Hoffman, "Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)", STD 94, RFC 8949, DOI 10.17487/RFC8949, December 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8949>.

[RFC9113] Thomson, M., Ed. and C. Benfield, Ed., "HTTP/2", RFC 9113, DOI 10.17487/RFC9113, June 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9113>.

[Robinson] Robinson, S., Hellstern, R., and M. Diaz, "Sea Change: Prioritizing the Environment in Internet Architecture", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Schien] Schien, D., Shabajee, P., and C. Preist, "Rethinking Allocation in High-Baseload Systems: A Demand-Proportional Network Electricity Intensity Metric", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Schooler] Schooler, E., Taylor, R., Zilberman, N., Soulé, R., Nafus, D., Manohar, R., and U. Cummings, "A Perspective on Carbon-aware Networking", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

[Thubert] Thubert, P., "Digital Twin and Automation", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[TVRWG] IESG, "Time-Variant Routing (tvr)", IETF Working Group, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/tvr/about/>.

[Vanderbauwhede] Vanderbauwhede, W., "Frugal Computing", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, December 2022.

[Welzl] Welzl, M., Alay, O., Teymoori, P., and S. Islam, "Reducing Green House Gas Emissions With Congestion Control", Position paper in the IAB Workshop on Environmental Impacts of Internet Applications and Systems, October 2022.

Appendix A. Workshop Participants 🌸

The participants who attended at least one of the four sessions were: 🫶

Alex Clemm
Ali Rezaki
Arif Ahmed
Beatrice Siccardi
Brendan Moran
Bruce Nordman
Carlos Pignataro
Carsten Bormann
Cedric Westphal
Chiara Lombardo
Chris Adams
Colin Perkins
Daniel Schien
Dawn Nafus
Dom Robinson
Eric Voit
Éric Vyncke
Esther Roure Vila
Eve M. Schooler
Fieke Jansen
Franco Davoli
Gonzalo Salgueiro
Greg Mirsky
Henk Birkholz
Hesham ElBakoury
Hosein Badran
Iankang Yao
Jan Lindblad
Jari Arkko
Jens Malmodin
Jiankang Yao
John Preuß Mattsson
Jukka Manner
Julien Maisonneuve
Kristin Moyer
Lars Eggert
Laurent Ciavaglia
Lijun Dong
Louis Navarre
Louise Krug
Luis M. Contreras
Marisol Palmero Amador
Martin Flack
Maya Richman
Michael Welzl
Mike Mattera
Mohamed Boucadair
Nina Lövehagen
Noa Zilberman
Olivier Bonaventure
Pascal Thubert
Paul Shabajee
Per Andersson
Pernilla Bergmark
Peyman Teymoori
Qin Wu
Remy Hellstern
Rick Taylor
Rob WIlton
Rob Wilton
Romain Jacob
Russ White
Safiqul Islam
Selome Kostentinos Tesfatsion
Shayna Robinson
Snezana Mitrovic
Stefano Salsano
Suresh Krishnan
Tirumaleswar Reddy.K
Toerless Eckert
Uri Cummings
Vesna Manojlovic
Wim Vanderbauwhede

IAB Members at the Time of Approval 👑

Internet Architecture Board members at the time this document was approved for publication were: 💜

Dhruv Dhody
Lars Eggert
Wes Hardaker
Cullen Jennings
Mallory Knodel
Suresh Krishnan
Mirja Kühlewind
Tommy Pauly
Alvaro Retana
David Schinazi
Christopher Wood
Qin Wu
Jiankang Yao

Acknowledgments 🎀

Obviously, most of the credit goes to the workshop participants 🙌

The organizers wish to thank Cindy Morgan and Greg Wood for their work on the practical arrangements and communications relating to the workshop. This report was greatly enhanced by the feedback provided on it. Thanks to Michael Welzl in particular for his detailed review 🥹✨

Authors' Addresses 🦋

Jari Arkko Ericsson Email: jari.arkko@ericsson.com

Colin S. Perkins University of Glasgow Email: csp@csperkins.org

Suresh Krishnan Cisco Email: suresh.krishnan@gmail.com

And that's the whole RFC, bestie! 🌈💅 Literally iconic. 💖

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc9547 2024-02
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-19: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms