The Trade-Off between Power Consumption and Latency in Computer Networks

Part 4: - SUNSET 2011 WorkshopInternational audienceAs the power consumed by computer networks is nearly independent from the load, networks consume much more power than necessary when the load is low. We analyze the influence of disabling network components on power consumption and latency of data transfers. We define two power consumption models and compare the power consumption necessary to achieve given upper limits of latency.Our results show that a trade-off between power consumption and latency exists; it is e.g. possible to conserve 39% of power when accepting a 20% latency increase in the nobel-germany network. We conclude that it is possible for networks to adapt to changing demands to conserve power while the latencies increase only slightly

The graph neural networking challenge: a worldwide competition for education in AI/ML for networks

International audienceDuring the last decade, Machine Learning (ML) has increasingly become a hot topic in the field of Computer Networks and is expected to be gradually adopted for a plethora of control, monitoring and management tasks in real-world deployments. This poses the need to count on new generations of students, researchers and practitioners with a solid background in ML applied to networks. During 2020, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has organized the "ITU AI/ML in 5G challenge", an open global competition that has introduced to a broad audience some of the current main challenges in ML for networks. This large-scale initiative has gathered 23 different challenges proposed by network operators, equipment manufacturers and academia, and has attracted a total of 1300+ participants from 60+ countries. This paper narrates our experience organizing one of the proposed challenges: the "Graph Neural Networking Challenge 2020". We describe the problem presented to participants, the tools and resources provided, some organization aspects and participation statistics, an outline of the top-3 awarded solutions, and a summary with some lessons learned during all this journey. As a result, this challenge leaves a curated set of educational resources openly available to anyone interested in the topic