As the unwelcomed COVID-19 had its rapid explosion all over the world. Many of the countries sought an immediate need of lockdown. However, to make the ends meet, workers are under obligation to work from home. More precisely, to use internet for fulfilling the professional needs. Now, the main concern of all the all the renowned ISPs is to meet internet demand. During this global emergency, companies cannot afford outages at any cost.
March 10, DE- CIX made a world record of hitting 9.1 Tb/sec in data throughput. This is also the highest score ever by organization itself. As per the statistics, peak traffic increased from 8.3Tb/sec to 9.1Tb/sec, with a rise of 800 Gb/sec. The flabbergasting fact is that these figures were porjected by the end of the year. Chief Technical Officer, Dr. Thomas King in his comments promised the best service during hard times.
Flooding On Internet Begins
On the Verizon network, the figures for video climbed up to 41%. Whereas the VPN usage is at 65% as of now. According to Ookla,The fixed download speed in India declined to 35.4 (Mbps) by April 27. Meanwhile, the mobile download speed was down to10.35.Mbps. Also, a push of 20% and 40% was there in both downstream and upstream traffic respectively. AT&T reports 100% increase in Wifi calls between 10 to 17 March. Many of the users had to encounter low speeds. Popular video platforms such as Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime reduced the amount of data consumption in order to get stability. The scenario would have been worse otherwise. As the number of outages to ISPs records are near 250 during the April 20-26, where 125 were in U. S. alone.
From expert’s pen
According to experts, meeting growing internet demands during tough times such as COVID-19 is a challenge indeed. In the beginning, internet traffic increased by 35% leaving providers on tenterhooks. Also, the equipments started to get extremely heated. However, these problem were handled with apt technical measures. Networks are vigilantly monitored in order anticipate and avoid data congestion.
Assuring the system’s robustness, Mr. Davidoson said.“IP is built to last through any sort of disaster, and the core s built to live through almost anything”. Mr. Jonathan Davidson is the senior vice president as well as GM of Cisco’s Mass-Scale Infrastructure.
Researchers consider advanced network planning and traffic engineering techniques very reliable for it. More to user relief, the big ISP’s were working on pandemic planning since last decade. However, Mr. Verizon’s Irlando expressed his concern and uncertainty by saying “No one knows the future, but we will not have 90% of America working from home,”.
As a lot of businesses are struggling due to COVID-19, telecom companies are profiting exponentially but with some problems on their shoulders.