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When I recently upgraded my switch at home to a gigabit one, I thought I’d shop around for one that was green. My old 100 Mbps switch was always so warm to the touch, due to it not converting the AC power to DC power very efficiently, that I had mounted a heat sink on top of it. My DSL modem, which also got quite warm, was stacked on top of the switch, and I thought that perhaps the heat sink would prevent the devices from overheating and experiencing early failure. I was set on finding a new switch that was more efficient and ran cooler.

I had heard about green power supply units (PSUs) for computers back when I was building a “silent pc” using the information from SPCR. It only made sense that in order to have a quiet computer, you needed to get rid of the moving parts such as constantly running fans. In order to get rid of the constantly running fan on the PSU, it was necessary to have a PSU that didn’t run hot. In order to accomplish this, the power supply had to be efficient. Most power supply units only convert AC to DC power with 70% efficiency. The other 30% is lost and primarily converted directly into heat. Most fanless power supplies use heatsinks to deal with the heat, but they’re also typically more efficient, by converting 80% of the AC power into DC power. Depending on how many watts your power supply is pulling, a 80% efficient unit put out half the heat as a 70% efficient unit. There are some fanless power supply units that are marketed as being 89% efficient.

Besides the obvious cost savings in electricity used by the device, using more efficient power supplies can also offer the following benefits:

• Less heat generated also means less electricity used to cool the server room
• Not having a fan in the computer’s power supply can help lower the amount of dust in the computer, increasing the life of the system
• The cooler the system is, the better it is likely to operate under load
• A cooler system will likely increase the life of the system
• Less electrictiy means a greener earth, and lower carbon footprint for your company

There are a lot of eight port gigabit port switches to chose from, but I could only find one that was advertised as being “green”. The DGS-2208 from D-Link is a 8 port gigabit switch that only sends power to the ports that are being used, unlike most switches that will send power to all ports regardless. Additionally, it determines the cable length and uses less power to transmit signals over shorter cables. The DGS-2208 uses the least power when using cables under 20 meters, which is longer than most home users require. The switch also offers a 144KByte buffer per port and jumbo frames up to 9600 bytes, which are quite acceptable. When I touch this switch after it’s been running for weeks, it’s just slightly warmer than room temperature, and I no longer worry about extra cooling.

A new study by GreenFactor, an ongoing global technology and environmental research initiative, found that consumers are getting savvy about green and are demanding that electronics brands provide more clear information about their products’ engery savings.

The GreenFactor study found that saving energy is the most important reason why consumers are considering green electronics, but that the barriers to purchasing green are primarily from manufacturers not providing information, from the additional cost of green products, and from lack of availability. I recommend reading the rest of the results of the study at GreenFactor’s Web site.

I definitely am having a difficult time finding network security products that are advertised as being green. Although I can highly recommend that everyone start going green with their next hardware purchases, I’m not sure that there are that many options out there. If anyone knows of any, please contact me.

Of course there is no substitution for energy savings when it comes to turning systems off when not in use. An Internet server that is shut off when not in use is also generally more secure. Don’t forget that some extras steps are needed to monitor a system that is turned off, in order to detect when the server goes missing.