  Energy efficiency is a corner stone of sustainability in data center and
high-performance networking. However, at present there is a notable structural
mismatch between network silicon development targets and network equipment
utilization patterns in the field. In particular, some aspects of network
energy utilization (eg load-proportional energy consumption) routinely stay out
of focus during system design and implementation. Drawing from hands-on
research and development in high-speed and grid networking, we identify a novel
approach to energy efficiency in network engineering. In this paper, we
demonstrate how the problem of efficient network system design can be dissected
into smaller sections based on timescales of traffic processing. The newly
proposed approach allows R&D efforts to be tightly paired to resources and
sustainability targets to improve energy efficiency in many classes of network
and telecom devices.
