As cities around the globe go under lockdown due to Coronavirus, millions are left with no choice but to stay indoors.
Due to this, the traffic on the internet has sky-rocketed with video conferring tools and streaming platforms witnessing an unprecedented usage spike.
However, it is still not enough to overwhelm the systems, according to Cloudflare – one of the biggest infrastructure and security providing companies for online services and websites.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, also said that the internet traffic surge due to Coronavirus is less than what the company’s networks handle during major events like “Superbowl in the United States, or Eurovision in Europe, or the Olympics, or the World Cup.”
That being said, Prince mentioned there are, indeed, changes in daily trends and unusual traffic spikes in a few countries. Italy, which has been hit the hardest outside China where the virus originated, is seeing internet traffic increase by over 30%.
Meanwhile, the usual traffic spikes that come in around 7:30 p.m. in each time zone, mostly through streaming services, have shifted “closer to the middle of the workday” as more people have started working from home.
On the other hand, ISP’s and tech companies are making sure that there is no potential network congestion. Recently, Microsoft announced it would put a few restrictions on its services after the Azure cloud witnessed a 775% increase in traffic.
Similarly, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ have also limited the network usage on their platforms. YouTube, on the other hand, has decided to limit video streaming to 480p quality for the next thirty days in India.
