Collaborative algorithm with a green touch

Abstract

Discovery and announcement processes are regular tasks in ubiquitous scenarios, since they are important to support devices' self-adaptation. However, devices enable a multitude of protocols by default, including many not always required by users or networks. For example, the NetBIOS protocol is rarely used in some networks, but it is continuously executed by several Desktops. Consequently, today's networks waste energy processing protocol messages that should be turned off. In this paper, we analyze such energy cost, and we propose devices' collaboration and sharing of traffic knowledge to save energy. Firstly, we suggest that devices should view protocols in the same way of users through a social analogy. Skype, MSN, ARP and other protocols are seen as societies with specific languages, which devices can learn and teach, similarly to societies. Finally, simulations showed that our proposal is able to reduce energy consumption for all network's devices. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.