Not a Trade-Off: On the Wi-Fi Energy Efficiency of Effective Internet Congestion Control
Michael Welzl · 2022
It is common to regard performance and energy efficiency as a trade-off, and this is a characteristic of many proposed solutions for energy efficiency. This is disadvantageous, as it is tempting for administrators or end users to disable energy conserving mechanisms when they have a performance cost. In contrast, this article makes the point that improvements in Internet congestion control can be inherently energy-efficient: for example, minimizing the Flow Completion Time (FCT) of data transfers, one of the most common goals in congestion control, can significantly reduce the energy usage of a Wi-Fi receiver.