Aggregate energy consumption across a network

Abstract

This disclosure relates to determining aggregate energy consumption associated with sending content (e.g., media content, such as a video file, audio file, etc.) across a network. For example, nodeA receives a network packet from serverand forwards the packet to nodeB. NodeA determines an amount of energy consumed by nodeA in processing the packet. NodeA adds this determined energy consumption value to an energy consumption value in a header within the network packet to produce an aggregate energy consumption value and send the network packet with the aggregate energy consumption value to nodeB. NodeB receives the network packet from node. NodeB determines an amount of energy consumed by nodeB in processing the packet. NodeB adds this determined energy consumption value to the energy consumption value in the header within the network packet to produce an aggregate energy consumption value and send the network packet with the aggregate energy consumption value to nodeG. NodeG also adds its determined energy consumption to the aggregate energy consumption value received from nodeB. NodeG sends the packet with the further updated aggregate energy consumption value to communication device. After communication devicereceives the packet, a process running on communication deviceextracts and stores the aggregate energy consumption value. When communication devicereceives another packet related to the first packet, communication deviceextracts, from this second packet, the aggregated energy consumption and sums this new aggregated energy consumption value with the stored aggregated energy consumption value in order to determine a total energy consumption. Thus, the present disclosure provides for determining an aggregate energy consumption value as well providing users of a network with information that makes them aware of how much energy is being consumed to transmit and/or receive content through the network. The energy consumption value for network nodes that cannot determine the amount of energy needed to send one or more network packets may be estimated.