Communication Link Switching Method Based on Destination IP Address for Power Savings

As the number of Internet users increases, network devices are required to achieve power savings. For this purpose, the authors proposed a Gigabit Ethernet link rate switching method based on the destination IP address for typical networks in small offices or at home. However, this method has a problem in that the communication is interrupted for a few seconds when the link rate is switched. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a communication link switching method. In this method, a client is assumed to connect via multiple network interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet and a wireless LAN to the user's subnet. When a user starts communicating, the method selects one of the interfaces based on the destination IP address. The communication experiments demonstrate that the proposed method has improved power consumption and avoided any communication interruption time compared to our previous method.