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Ethernet Goes Green: Page 5 of 5

We hope Frazier is right and, in fairness, the IEEE has plenty of opportunity to mitigate potential problems on this project. However, dynamically changing the speeds at both ends of a network connection in a multivendor network could have serious consequences if it goes awry. If, like autonegotiation, one end changes speed and the other end isn't notified of the change, the link will stop working. The feature will also have to be built into new NICs at a low-enough cost to reap the energy benefits.

Peter Morrissey, an NWC contributing editor, is manager of network design and development at Syracuse University and an adjunct professor at Syracuse&Apos;S School of Information Studies. Write to him at [email protected].