Rump Session

Is Green Networking Revolutionary?
Moderator: Rod Tucker; Inst. for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES) and Ctr. Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Univ. of Melbourne, Australia

OFC/NFOEC 2011 will hold a rump session devoted to the question: "Is green networking revolutionary?" Some think that changing to a more energy-efficient network is crucial to continued growth of the Internet. Others hold that "green" is merely today's buzzword for something quite familiar to us in the past. Will energy bottlenecks constrain network growth if more attention is not paid to energy efficiency?  Will consumers and carriers pay more to go "green"? Or will "green" networking reduce costs in the long run? Will "green" efforts revolutionize the network and reduce the carbon footprint of the network? Has power consumption played a role in past design? Must we go "green" or die? Come state your views and listen to those of others.

 The rump session will be a spontaneous discussion among the audience members. Other than a brief introduction to the issue, there will be no scheduled speakers. You can participate by attending and raising your hand to inform the moderator that you wish to speak or respond. A slide or two can be used to illustrate a point, but each speaker will be limited to a total of two minutes at the microphone. Conversation will flow most freely if your slide is on a plastic transparency, but we will accommodate digital slides on USB sticks and possibly slides transmitted over the wireless network. You can send slides beforehand by email; instructions for doing so will be posted soon. We will provide pens and transparencies for spontaneously written hand-drawn slides, which, after all, reflect the true spirit of a "rump" session.