Océ collaborates with ICT industry to help improve printer energy efficiency
New Ecma ProxZzzy Standard for network connected sleep published
Océ worked with international ICT companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, to develop a platform-independent industry standard for network connected sleep states. The Ecma ProxZzzy Standard addresses a fundamental problem with today’s PCs and printers; when they go to sleep, they ‘fall off’ the network. This is a reason that many PCs and printers are left on continuously. Billions of Euros per year of electricity, and consequent carbon emissions, could be saved by widespread use of a “network proxy” for devices like PCs, printers, game consoles and set-top boxes. Océ supported the development of the Standard and offered its expertise on the SNMP printer protocol.
Large amounts of electricity are used by electronic devices that are on solely for the purpose of maintaining network connectivity while they might otherwise be asleep. The energy required to just stay connected is small, but office printers and computers are currently keeping the equivalent of a complete desktop PC active to stay connected. A low-power proxy as described in the new Standard handles key network tasks for a high-power device, thus allowing the Desktop PC to sleep when not in active use.
The Standard provides an overall architecture for a proxy and key requirements for preying select protocols. Handling of incoming traffic can require generating a reply packet, causing a system wakeup, or ignoring it. Proxies also do some routine packet generation on their own, and data are exchanged between a host and a proxy when the host goes to sleep and when it wakes up.
A key goal of a proxy is to save energy, while simultaneously keeping the device accessible to the rest of the network. The operations of the proxy are best-effort, both in attempting to extend sleep time, as well as maintaining network access.
Experts from AMD, Apple, Hitachi, HP, Intel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lexmark, Microsoft, Océ, Realtek, Sony, Terra Novum and the University of South Florida collaboratively developed the ProxZzzy.
Ecma has forwarded the standard to the US Environmental Protection Agency so that products built to the ProxZzzy standard will be designated as implementations of the network presence provision in the ENERGY STAR Computer Specification.
More information about the Ecma Standard
