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Two energy saving approaches, called Fixed Upper Fixed Lower (FUFL) and Dynamic Upper Fixed Lower (DUFL), switching off idle optical Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interfaces during low traffic periods, have been implemented on a testbed. We show on a simple network scenario that energy can be saved using off‐the‐shelf equipment not explicitly designed for dynamic on/off operation. No packet loss is experienced in our experiments. We indicate the need for faster access to routers in order to perform the reconfiguration. This is particularly important for the more sophisticated energy saving approaches such as DUFL, since FUFL can be implemented locally.