The increase in sustained Internet traffic caused by the coronavirus blocking measures has led to the speculation infrastructure falling apart under load.
Although cloud-based services (such as Focus and Microsoft teams) have been disrupted, likely as a result of increased traffic, and broadband providers have experienced service problems, the UK has yet to experience significant downtime outside of normal ranges.
TechRadar Pro spoke to the network monitoring company ThousandEyes on the performance of the UK's Internet infrastructure, the challenges Internet Service Providers (ISPs) face and how the pandemic could affect Internet services in the future.
The company detects network performance problems by actively scanning networks of thousands of strategic points around the world. It takes billions of measurements every day, detecting instances when traffic is ending within ISPs and networks of public cloud providers, UCaaS providers, and peripheral service providers.
According to ThousandEyes, this interruption detection mechanism is highly specific, allowing isolation of traffic termination incidents up to the interfaces of the infrastructure involved.
How is interrupt detection set?
ThousandEyes detects network performance problems (including outages) through an active network probe from strategic points around the world. The resulting network telemetry data covers latency, packet loss, and other key performance indicators.
While packet loss of any level can potentially be detrimental to users, ThousandEyes defines an outage as an incident involving 100% packet loss, where traffic ends entirely at some point within a network.
Since the blocking measures were introduced, how would you assess the performance of the UK's internet infrastructure?
The performance of Internet infrastructure in the UK has varied over the course of the blockade, but has generally held up well.
Compared globally, outages in the UK have remained generally low, standing at 21 in the first week of closure, with the second week increasing to 28. A significant reduction was observed in the third week with only 10 outages , before observing a slight increase in the fourth week with 13.
How is the Internet doing in the UK compared to other countries?
About a third of all outages in the first quarter of this year occurred in EMEA. Although the duration and scope of many of the outages suggest that they were the result of network operators optimizing performance as traffic levels increased, we have also seen a clear increase in outages among application network providers. collaborative, including video conferencing services.
Comparatively speaking, the UK internet has done well. We saw an increase in outages in mid-March, but when a second global rise occurred in early April, the UK was minimally affected.
What type of damage was caused by the recent outages you identified?
The impact of outages can vary based on the location, time of day, and extent of the outage. In general, when Tier 1 ISPs, broadband providers, and large transit providers experience outages, the impact on consumers and businesses can be significant.
The recent Tata Communications outage had far-reaching geographic implications, as did CenturyLink's outage last week, prompting Merrill Lynch to publicly report disruptions to its brokerage business. Many other large companies experienced service outages during the outage. Taken together, the financial impact may well have been millions of dollars.
What have been the main causes of outages in the past few weeks?
Interruptions can occur for many different reasons, including infrastructure failures, fiber outage, and configuration error, making it difficult to predict.
Throughout March, as traffic usage increased to support remote work, online school and leisure activities, the duration and extent of network outages has increased compared to the pre-coronavirus. These characteristics are not consistent with interruptions related to congestion. Instead, they suggest increased traffic engineering activity by network operators, who are likely to address increased traffic use.
What are the biggest challenges ISPs currently face?
Overall, ISPs have performed well given the dramatically increased use of the network. As traffic volumes increased, many reported an increase in bandwidth and connectivity requests from their clients and peers. Responding to large numbers of service requests may have been challenging for some providers.
ISPs are also under increased scrutiny, given the reliance that users now have on the Internet. Even non-network related issues like fiber outages can bring unwanted focus.
However, outages are inevitable even under normal Internet conditions, and sound network operations and strategies will continue to be the best methods to limit their occurrence.
Do you anticipate any change in the way services are consumed in the future?
The transition overnight to a remote workforce and customer base has made one thing very clear to many companies: They depend on a well-functioning Internet to drive all those online services and applications that are essential to experiences. of employees and consumers.
In the future, we can see a change in the way companies invest and consume some Internet services. ISPs can also examine their service and investment prioritization given the high utilization of consumer networks.