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3.1.2 GREEN ETHERNET
PORT POWER SAVINGS
What is EEE?
EEE is a power saving option that reduces the power usage when there is low or no traffic utilization.
EEE works by powering down circuits when there is no traffic. When a port gets data to be transmitted all circuits are
powered up. The time it takes to power up the circuits is named wakeup time. The default wakeup time is 17 us for
1Gbit links and 30 us for other link speeds. EEE devices must agree upon the value of the wakeup time in order to
make sure that both the receiving and transmitting device has all circuits powered up when traffic is transmitted. The
devices can exchange wakeup time information using the LLDP protocol. EEE works for ports in auto-negotiation
mode, where the port is negotiated to either 1G or 100 Mbit full duplex mode. For ports that are not EEE-capable the
corresponding EEE checkboxes are grayed out and thus impossible to enable EEE for.
When a port is powered down for saving power, outgoing traffic is stored in a buffer until the port is powered up
again. Because there are some overhead in turning the port down and up, more power can be saved if the traffic can
be buffered up until a large burst of traffic can be transmitted. Buffering traffic will give some latency in the traffic.