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Energy Efficient Ethernet Interfaces

The energy efficient ethernet (EEE) helps in reducing the power consumption on physical layer devices. Configuring these EEE on interfaces includes enabling EEE on Base-T copper ethernet port based on the power utilization and also verifying if EEE is saving energy on the configured ports.

Reduce Power Consumption on Interfaces using Energy Efficient Ethernet

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 switching part of the transmission circuit into low power mode when the link is idle.

An Ethernet link consumes power even when a link is idle. EEE provides a method to utilize power in such a way that Ethernet links use power only during data transmission. EEE uses a signaling protocol, Low Power Idle (LPI) for achieving the power saving when an Ethernet link is idle. 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

Configure Energy Efficient Ethernet on Interfaces

Configure EEE only on EEE-capable Base-T copper Ethernet ports. If you configure EEE on unsupported ports, the console displays the message: “EEE not supported”.

This topic describes:

Enable EEE on an EEE-Capable Base-T Copper Ethernet Port

To enable EEE on an EEE-capable Base-T copper Ethernet interface:

You can view the EEE status by using the show interfaces interface-name detail command.

Disable EEE on a Base-T Copper Ethernet Port

To disable EEE on a Base-T copper Ethernet interface:

By default, EEE is disabled on EEE-capable ports.

Verify EEE-enabled Ports

Purpose

Verify that enabling EEE saves energy on Base-T Copper Ethernet ports.

Action

You can see the amount of energy saved by EEE on an EX Series switch using the show chassis power-budget-statistics command.

  1. View the power budget of an EX Series switch before enabling EEE.

    • On an EX6210 switch:

    • On an EX4300 switch:

  2. Enable EEE on Base-T Copper Ethernet ports and save the configuration.

  3. View the power budget of the switch after enabling EEE.

    • On an EX6210 switch:

    • On an EX4300 switch:

Meaning

On an EX6210 switch, the Power Used field in the output shows the actual power being consumed by the line card or SRE module, including PoE power. If you compare the values in the Power Used field before and after enabling EEE for FPC 3 and FPC 7, you will notice that power is saved when EEE is enabled.

Note:

Only for EX6210 switches, the Power Used field is displayed in the output.

On an EX4300 switch, if you compare the values in the Non-PoE power being consumed field before and after enabling EEE, you will notice that power is saved when EEE is enabled.