There are online now more than ever. Can the Internet to keep up?

Since COVID-19 spreads pandemic me around the world and compel them to come in large cities and entire countries to a permanent lock status, many people will be encouraged job or order or learn from a distance, holding meetings , conference calls, and online classes in isolation. But the Internet itself ready for the sudden increase of activity? And what about the millions of Americans who do not have access to high speed Internet in the first place? First the good news. Yes, it has been in recent weeks across the country from the houses, a strong uptick in traffic – Web usage is 35%, according to Andrew Dugan, chief technology officer of networking company Qwest. But, fortunately, pointing in use does not threaten the core infrastructure of the tape of self-incrimination, as it can be extended with additional capacity to handle the increased activity. “We saw a couple of hot spots, but simply for the right treatment in the center of the network,” says Dugan. “Especially for the larger carriers such as that provided us with a fiber network-based, we can add up quickly enough the capacity of our Internet backbone.” That said, can in some places more than others challenge the speed needed to maintain, Dugan says, especially in less populated areas. The Internet infrastructure outside the major cities, it is typically not as robust or built to take such a dramatic increase in traffic at a time. A particular problem is local connections to people in individual homes – a distance called the “last mile” – which are managed by the Internet service provider (ISP), such as Verizon and Comcast. And ‘the last mile, which could also suffer during the hours of lace over when every home video busy work or evening streaming, playing, or just messing around only network. Immediately handling are most ISPs uptick in traffic very nice to see a lot of increase in traditional communications, such as voice calls. Verizon’s latest report shows net a huge increase in voice calls – up to 800 million per day, twice the volume of calls than its day more call volume on Mother’s Day – as a result of the pandemic on people socially from others to remain on the sidelines. Your use of the service of collaboration (such as video conferencing software and online learning service) also rose in front of 47% over the week, with the use of shedding weekend. A Verizon spokesman said this week that the company has handled 218.009 terabytes of data, equivalent to 106 million hours of video streaming. But in line with so many people who are only slightly slowed Internet speeds at home because of the increased network congestion. This is mainly thanks to a video conferencing software, a type of Internet use that are not good offers with a network of more residential Internet services, according to Morgan Kurk, networking CTO CommScope. He says that while at home Internet services offer many download capability – good for surfing the Internet or streaming movies – tend to be slow upload speed to have. as a video stream on your collagen – – fades into the background, which means sending data. “It ‘so much uplink traffic, which did not exist before,” said Kurk. Some ISPs, such as Xfinity and Verizon have eased their rules of surplus data or increased data protection for free. This is good news for your monthly bill, but increase the use maybe more, leading to lower speeds due to overloading of the network – to further explain why in the last video conference calls may not seem as great as what a couple of months ago. Even if the Internet itself mostly good, some individual platforms may have problems related to the application. Starting this week, the Microsoft collaboration tool on the job has been interrupted for hours-long team, many of them leave in a passage, not able to connect colleagues. Thursday ‘, some Google services were temporarily Ookla The Down Detector Web site that reports of failures from a variety of services based on user feedback and trends of social media. It is unclear whether failure was used directly for further use Corona-related, but it’s safe to expect for your favorite services here and a break. “It ‘s important to remember that the Internet is not a single unit,” says Ookla CTO Luca Deryckx. “It is a series of interconnected networks, each with its own potential bottleneck and potential scalability issues.” Influencing the most important digital platforms should be able to fairly easy to handle isolated incidents, these episodes does not mean a large majority of users can. The service employees that many of us rely on, such as zoom video conferencing platform, are confident that will be up to the challenge. “The scale is in the zoom DNA as a company,” says exec Zoom Janine Pelosi. “Our ongoing ability to proactively manage and conserve our platform has enabled us to deliver on this decisive moment in time.” However, you may soon find that your movies and shows do not look as good as you usually do, especially if you are using a high end TV with a resolution of 4K video. Companies like Netflix, Facebook and YouTube have already agreed to reduce the quality of the video stream in Europe as a way to reduce the overall load on the networks. “If you tuned especially in terms of quality video at any resolution may notice a small decrease in quality,” said Ken Florance Netflix executive in a company blog post. “But you are still paying for the video quality.” Currents in the US will be established in this deterioration. “On the ISP side, want some partners in regions such as Latin America, reduce our bandwidth us as soon as possible,” says Florance. “But others want to go on as usual with the company.” Even if the Internet itself remains stable, it will not help the millions of Americans who depend for a connection to their schools or jobs. Not many Americans have broadband at home at all, particularly in low-income areas or rural communities. While the Federal Communications Commission says more than 21 million Americans have no access to broadband high speed, a BroadbandNow independent survey puts that number closer to 40 million, almost double the value of the FCC, on the basis of self-data reported by ISP. Microsoft estimates are even more alarming; It says an estimated 162 million Americans lack broadband internet at home. All this highlights the “digital divide” the nation and the stark contrast in the field of Internet broadband access among the different communities. “We should celebrate the fact that so many people [remote] work have the ability, but we must recognize that separated us who do not,” said FCC Jessica Rosenworcel commissioner, a lawyer for fixing the gap in the band wide. “Let’s go to the other side to do it, and when we do go that broadband is considered important infrastructure, like water, like electricity, and that all need access to it. We have to recognize this moment, what it is, and this is an invitation that everyone in this country with regard to access to modern service required for the function of social life and business “. What should you do if you are having problems with slow video blurry or downloads are to be had? If you use the wireless router to get online, remember, other devices are on the same piece of the Internet to compete your video session ever needed, resulting in a home network overhead. You may want to consider using an Ethernet cable to the router is connected directly to the bandwidth or simply release wireless devices that are not in use, until you’re done. You can also check your online activities “time-shifting,” said CommScope Kurk. “We all seem to things like WebEx meetings every hour or half hour to start,” said Kurk. “This means that each touches the same server at the same time. This may not be the best experience, so if this change even five or 10 minutes, you can have a better experience.” As for your movies and TV shows ? There is always Blu-Ray.
Image by Getty Images copyright 2020 Andrea Verdelli