How’s the Internet Doing? Depends Where You Look

As residents shelter in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the surge in demand that internet providers would expect to see gradually over the course of an entire year has instead hit in a matter of weeks. How are these crucial networks faring, and will they be able to keep handling this kind of a load? The answer is complicated and even more so the longer the pandemic persists. But so far — as anyone fortunate enough to be able to work remotely and stream Netflix can attest — things seem to be going OK. “These networks are holding up pretty well to the onslaught of traffic demand that they’ve been subject to,” said Steve Alexander, chief technology officer at Ciena Corp. Still, there’s no one official source for tracking the state of America’s digital connectivity. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released a statemen recently summarizing the upbeat feedback he’s received from internet providers. “It appears,” he said, that networks are performing fine, relying on the data disclosed by those companies. 

But different methodologies make it difficult to get a good read. Part of the problem is that nationwide averages aren’t practical when internet infrastructure and reliability can vary immensely from one state or county to the next. Another issue is that connections tend to be measured in terms of download speeds, while upload speeds are much slower and are needed for things like video calls. That’s why it’s important to look at latency, the amount of time it takes a signal to travel, which can explain annoying buffering on streaming apps and lags in a FaceTime connection.

The unprecedented demand “is putting real stress on our networks, and with so much of modern life now dependent on these connections it is fair to ask how providers are managing this new demand,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel . “Getting a few reports using different methods from a handful of companies is useful, but it’s not enough.” Commissioner Rosenworcel has called for the FCC to issue daily updates on network status, just as it would during a hurricane or mass power outage, events that activate its Disaster Information Reporting System.