An increasing need for power is an increasing concern.

“Electricity Fuels the Internet,” a current ARI project researched by Monica Mallini-Rourke, addresses the growing concern for an increased use of power used for server farms in the Northern Virginia area.

Server farms, or buildings that house servers in mass quantities, are increasing.  As the Internet becomes more popular and accessible, server farms intensify in energy consumption.

Server farms need digital quality power, or power that is perfect and always on. In addition, equipment must be kept at a specific temperature. Thus air conditioning is an important, and power intensive element. Providing such power to an increasing populous can be challenging for power companies.

“The Next Generation Internet (NGI) has a new form that we believe will bring a solution to the power drain problem,” said Mallini-Rourke, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at ARI, who is studying the NGI power trend to make Internet less power intensive.

(NGI) is evolving into a decentralized Internet, which places resources closer to users. NGI scatters servers that are linked together logically to make a larger entity. 

“It’s like making a local telephone call verses a long distance call.  The local call is more direct and costs less to perform,” Mallini-Rourke said. 

NGI is flatter than the current Internet system. With today’s Internet system, all requests must go through a main server creating a bottleneck, which can cause costly delays. NGI eliminates the bottleneck by creating more places to retrieve data. The user doesn't have to go through a main-server; instead he or she is able to access data peer-to-peer.

Such a system increases the rate at which data can be retrieved, decreases costs, increases reliability, and encourages subscriptions.

For more information, please contact Monica Mallini-Rourke or reference http://www.ari.vt.edu/posters/Poster-Mallini.pdf

Today's Internet is centralized, which  causes chokes in data and an inefficient use of energy. Tomorrow's Internet is distributed. It uses resources efficiently and allows numerous users to enter without delays.

ARI Research Presentations

Presented Friday, Nov. 8, 2002

The Executive Director of Northern Virginia Operations for Virginia Tech, Professor James Bohland, visited ARI to discuss current and future ARI research programs.

The seminar included nine presentations from the Electrical and Computer and Mechanical Engineering Departments, as well as the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department.

Topics ranged from renewable energy including geothermal heat pumps for Virginia's public schools, to resource management and quality of service in wireless and mobile adhoc networks, to robust jammer suppression in radar systems.

Also presented were research centers located at ARI including the Critical Infrastructure Modeling and Assessment Program (CIMAP) and the Center for High Performance Manufacturing (CHPM). 

For further information and complete PowerPoint presentations given at the seminar, please visit: http://www.ari.vt.edu/bohlandshowcase.htm