Design of UPnP based Cooperative Network Connectivity Proxy

The Internet connected edge devices require active participation by generating and responding to routine applications/protocols heart-beat messages. Failing to do this will result in loss of their presence over the Internet. A huge amount of energy is wasted every year to keep idle or unused network hosts powered-up 24/7 only to maintain the network presence for remote access, file sharing and other administrative management reasons. Thus, reducing the energy waste of ICT is becoming increasingly important due to rising costs of electricity, limited natural resources and environmental concerns. This extended abstract presents a new design of cooperative Network Connectivity Proxy (NCP) to reduce the network energy consumption. The NCP uses a low power entity that can maintain the network presence for the high power devices and smartly allows them to transition into low power sleep/active modes. The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol, that allows seamless discovery and communication between the network hosts can be wellsuited approach for the design of NCP. All the hosts in the local network can seamlessly interact and use the services offered by the NCP. The UPnP based NCP includes a connectivity management service that implements the key network presence and management protocols like DHCP, ICMP, ARP etc. Thus, the NCP can reduce the network energy consumption by 60 to 70% depending on the network host’s time usage model.