The first data cap waiver I've seen due to coronavirus. I expect other ISPs to quickly follow.
AT&T is the first major ISP to confirm that it will be suspending all broadband usage caps as millions of Americans bunker down in a bid to slow the rate of COVID-19 expansion. Consumer groups and a coalition of Senators are now pressuring other ISPs to follow suit.
I do worry if the broadband networks have the capacity. WFH traffic is usually different from regular consumer traffic. My neighbors were telling me about the mandatory work from home they had today and how the VPN struggled to work.
To those upgrading those things, keep at it. You will get there.
I am not worried. Residential ISPs are usually at peak in the late evening. They have loads of capacity during the day.
Do they have capacity to the right places?
The evening traffic peak is usually streaming entertainment bits from CDNs on the edge of the network.
Work From Home seems to be VPNs going between residential to business ISPs interconnections and lots of videoconferencing services (zoom, webex, etc).
I'm not an insider anymore, so I don't see what ISP capacity planners see on their dashboards.
Comcast announced the same and also lowering or eliminating fees for low income homes in the short term.
Lyle Giese
LCR Computer Services, Inc.
Hi,
I am not worried. Residential ISPs are usually at peak in the late evening.
They have loads of capacity during the day.Do they have capacity to the right places?
The evening traffic peak is usually streaming entertainment bits from CDNs
on the edge of the network.
Perhaps MPAA can follow AT&Ts lead and suspend copyright enforcement so people can torrent some entertainment? 
I will say that as much as AT&T can be disliked by some groups, they did the right thing and are giving a great example.
Thanks,
Sabri
No they didn't do the right thing. The right thing would have been to eliminate the caps a decade ago.
Yes, this is what I’m concerned about. Most of the content/cloud people have built networks around the capacity needed to get bits into the networks and often aggressively peer.
The corporate office that is behind one incumbent that now has a global set of people doing VPN activities at 10x the prior capacity of a week ago may have a harder time fitting.
I expect there will be areas which see a higher base load that contributes to seeing the peaks earlier.
- Jared
Don't get me started on this :-).
Mark.
What we've done, over the years, is build OpenVPN servers both in the
office as well as the local data centre within the same city. This way,
staff have the option of connecting to either one, whether for reasons
of balancing load, managing office outages, accounting for maintenance,
e.t.c.
I generally connect to the one in the data centre, because then I'm
avoiding our local Metro-E network to get to the office one :-). But
some times, one of them won't be available, so having the option for a
2nd local one is always good.
Mark.
Effing. This.
-Ben
But it's so much fun to market that we don't have caps - and our cable
competitor does. Expensive ones, too.
Never stop your enemy when they are making a mistake.
Curious if anyone here (especially at CenturyLink / AT&T/ Comcast) has seen any graphs of network traffic over time and could share details (redacted of course due to the sensitivity). Would love to hear if/how capacity is constrained with more people working form home.
But why do they peak in the late evening? …'cause that’s when folks are home.
If you now have a houseful of work-from-home and school-from-home people, we could, potentially, see the curve change, especially if folks are working and watching netflix/youtube, etc.
I suspect rather than the peak dropping at all, the peak will stretch over a longer time period.
-Steve
Hey Networkers,
Seems other companies will imitate ATT, comcast is giving it free and with the national emergencies universities will work online…etc. Yet this is not US scope, it is worldwide. There is blog from cloudfare seems interesting about the internet traffic.
Does other have graph seeing traffic difference?
https://blog.cloudflare.com/covid-19-impacts-on-internet-traffic-seattle-italy-and-south-korea/
Brgds,
LG
Does that mean Comcast is going to drop my $30/month surcharge for actual unlimited?
Owen
We are seeing the peak spread out… we carry mostly pacific northwest residential networks… we are also seeing new, slightly higher evening peaks.
Things have been eerily quiet where we are (Oklahoma). We're an eyeball
network and have had no noticeable changes in bandwidth usage that couldn't
be explained by statistical noise.
We keep game planning more and more contingency scenarios, waiting to jump
when needed, but things have just been unexpectedly normal.
Perhaps we're behind the game in impact. I'd be curious to hear about
networks that are "ahead of us", and what the impact has been.
Things have been eerily quiet where we are (Oklahoma). We're an eyeball
network and have had no noticeable changes in bandwidth usage that couldn't
be explained by statistical noise.We keep game planning more and more contingency scenarios, waiting to jump
when needed, but things have just been unexpectedly normal.Perhaps we're behind the game in impact. I'd be curious to hear about
networks that are "ahead of us", and what the impact has been.
I am not a sysadmin of a Network, but a few hours in advance.
The bad news: I can ask you how many cases in Oklahoma?
The good news: there is news about medication.
Alex
By "ahead of us", I'm hoping to glean some operational experience from
European, or networks in larger cities with a more impactful lock
down.
We seem to be going down the same lines of lock downs, and shelf clean
outs, just a few days/weeks behind what I've been seeing in the news.
I get nervous anytime I hear a school administrator or public official
blast out "or binge-watch your favorite shows on Netflix, and of course,
wash your hands a lot!"
Fortunately the health impact has been minimal here.