(Newswire.net — April 30, 2020) —
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused three months of documented increased Internet traffic that has made every day seem like the Super Bowl.
According to Forbes, from January 1 to March 22, 2020, US Internet traffic rose 18 percent as measured by Cloudflare. That increase continues to cause glitches such as frozen Zoom meeting video or grainy video.
As people entertain themselves by watching a video or continue doing their jobs while working from home, the Internet becomes overcrowded and lagging happens. Some areas like Seattle experienced a larger surge with a traffic increase of 25 percent.
While you would typically see a drop in use overnight, the US nighttime troughs disappeared. During March, overnight use was higher than January’s peak daytime use.
The largest ISP in the US, AT&T, reported an increase in overall Internet traffic of 31 percent on March 27 compared to February 27. According to the ISP, Wi-Fi calls increased by 82 percent, cell phone calls increased 32 percent and text messaging increased by 46 percent as Americans attempted to stay in touch during the pandemic.
While it began strong, by March, US Internet speeds had slowed by 10 megabits per second. The typical fixed broadband download speed is about 140 Mbps. Though the difference seems small, it hints at what other countries already experience.
Since most users in the US obtain service from Tier-3 services, the “last mile” on the Internet, the connections are inherently slower. Tier-1, the ISPs, provide and control the traffic routes. This consists of the AT&Ts and Verizons of the US. Tier-2, the regional providers, like Cox Communications, purchase service from Tier-1, essentially acting as a corporate reseller. Sometimes, a Tier-1 provider leases the Tier-2 distribution infrastructure such as underground cabling. It’s a mutual situation where both tiers need something the other has. Those consumers on the “last mile” experience the traffic bottleneck when more users than normal crowd the network.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman, Ajit Pai issued the “Keep Americans Connected Pledge” which asked US broadband and telephone service providers to maintain US connectivity during the pandemic. More than 700 service providers nationwide have agreed to the pledge, offering free GBs of service and waiving overage charges with some offering up to two months of introductory service for free so that American children and teens can continue their studies at home while schools remain shutdown.
That sputtering video chat or out-of-sync video signifies high latency, a situation that occurs when data packets get backed up on their trip to your computer. If it gets bad enough, that could shut down your ability to video conference. And while some people might confuse this sputtering with other computer issues like processing speeds, it’s generally a latency issue that’s not going away for the time being.
“What I am worried about is that we’re going to see higher and higher latencies from these queues building up in the network, making it harder to do things like video conferencing,” said Justine Sherry, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in an interview with Recode.
Europe already began experiencing these problems. Europe’s Internet speed varies between countries, and is on average slightly slower than in America. Italy has experienced one of the worst speed decreases since its government-mandated a citizen lockdown.
To make accommodations so users can still access necessary sites like their banks or the government’s websites. Netflix reduced European traffic by 25 percent. YouTube has limited video quality so it can free bandwidth needed to accommodate the increase in total worldwide Internet hits of 50 percent to 70 percent.
FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, has called on broadband and telephone service providers to maintain connectivity for Americans experiencing disruptions caused by the coronavirus epidemic, asking them to take the “Keep Americans Connected Pledge.”
The response from service providers across the nation has been positive. More than 700 service providers have taken the pledge.
Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facebook and also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is “just trying to keep the lights on” while his three firms experience record high usage. Although the two problems differ, they are related.
The networks used to host the Internet were designed to handle spikes in use, though not a sudden sustained use increase. Apps do not receive the same testing. Zuckerberg worries that the usage surge may crash one or all of his platforms.
In the week of March 11 and March 18, the software Microsoft Teams grew from 32 million to 44 million users, 37.5 percent growth. That caused near-daily outages. Slack, an instant messaging platform designed for workgroups, increased its paid subscribers by 40 percent this quarter.
The entrepreneur told the New York Times, “It really is a big technical challenge. We’re basically trying to ready everything we can.”