Supported Platforms
Understanding How Energy Efficient Ethernet Reduces Power Consumption on Interfaces
Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3az standard, reduces the power consumption of physical layer devices (PHYs) during periods of low link utilization. EEE saves energy by putting part of the transmission circuit into low power mode when the link is idle.
An Ethernet link consumes power even when a ink is idle. EEE provides a method to utilize power in such a way that Ethernet links use power only during data transmission. EEE specifies a signaling protocol, Low Power Idle (LPI) for achieving the power saving during the idle time of Ethernet links. EEE allows PHYs to exchange LPI indications to signal the transition to low power mode when there is no traffic. LPI indicates when a link can go idle and when the link needs to resume after a predefined delay without impacting data transmission.
The following copper PHYs are standardized by IEEE 802.3az:
- 100BASE-T
- 1000BASE-T
- 10GBASE-T
