U.S. Internet Well-Equipped To Handle Work From Home Surge

[appalachiablue]

Source: Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. internet won’t get overloaded by spikes in traffic from the millions of Americans now working from home to discourage the spread of the new coronavirus, experts say.

But connections could stumble for many if too many family members try to videoconference at the same time. Some may have to settle for audio, which is much less demanding of bandwidth.

Separately, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia on Saturday applauded announcements by several major U.S. internet providers for taking temporary measures — including the suspension of data caps, free public Wi-Fi and free broadband for households with children who lack it — designed to better accommodate remote access for students, workers and public health officials.
He and 17 other colleagues, Democrats and independents, had called for such measures in a letter Thursday to CEOs of AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Verizon, CenturyLink, Sprint and T-Mobile.

The core of the U.S. network is more than capable of handling the virus-related surge in demand because it has evolved to be able to easily handle bandwidth-greedy Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services...


Read more: https://apnews.com/127058dcac00c9eb20168c25a68abf01

[Chainfire]

1. Yes, but what a time

For one of our numerous enemies to throw a boot into the gears of the works. Take your pick, N. Korea, Iran, China, Russia and those are just the big boys in the internet sabotage business. They could then all blame it on each other. We are vulnerable not only on the health and economic fronts with the mishandling of this disease.

[appalachiablue]

2. A real concern, and 'mishandling' this epidemic by President Hoax,

Pox Viral News and anti- democratic extremists will be remembered.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. They already did

Flooding the oil market to crash the price exactly when our markets are at all time levels of speculation due to 10 years of QE1-2-3-4, our corporations (esp. oil) are overleveraged from stock buybacks, all when a dope is in the White House. Our government, democracy, and capitalism are getting whacked in the bargain. It's like dominoes now, no further intervention required.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. I already had problems Friday morning

when the stock markets opened. More people working from home already.

As usual, the experts are all wet.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Sure the "backbones" are fine

but it's those "roads" to the backbones that will get overwhelmed if the provider didn't put enough capacity at their head-ends, etc.

[paleotn]

5. Maybe so....

but some company's infrastructure may be taxed beyond the limit. The bandwidth between me and my company's servers may be adequate, but my company's servers may not be able to handle the load. As it is now, if I work from home on a snowy day, I log in very early to access large files. Otherwise, it's slow as Christmas.

[rickford66]

7. Those who can work at home are usually online all day at work

I doubt there'd be much difference. Too bad those cleaning people can't shove those brooms and mops through the internet.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. Yes, but at the office, it's mostly low-frequency text going over the wires ...

... not hi-def kitten videos.

Not that I ever lost focus when I worked from home, but ...

[rickford66]

12. Oh. So lo def porn ?

[Steelrolled]

8. Typical work-from-home internet usage

is nothing compared to streaming movies.

[jayfish]

9. Kinda Puts The Lie To...

the need for data caps and overages. ISPs are vulturitous. (I just made that word up)

[Initech]

11. I want this POS virus to be eradicated.

I don't want to work from home. I don't want to be isolated or quarantined. I want to go to a store and buy stuff again. I want to go to sporting events and concerts again. Fuck this god damn shit. I want society to be functioning again. Fuck this god damn virus.