• Most Ethernet ports remains always on running at maximum power, irrespective of whether there is data to transmit or not.
• Ethernet port traffic is bursty remaining idle for majority of its operation.

The EEE enabled switch could reduce it’s power consumption per port using Lower Power Interval (LPI) queries. Think of putting your switch ports into micro sleep mode so when they are not needed they are not transmitting… saving power. This power saving can add up. But for it to work, both sides have to support 802.3az using copper links. Otherwise, the connection is put into legacy mode for operation, which means its running at maximum power all the time.

LPI does not reduce the speed, but sleeps the transmitter when there is nothing to transmit, kind of like a kill switch that operates constantly at microseconds at a time.

This carbon reduction becomes even more prevalent as the 10G Base-T Ethernet becomes more prevalent.