Hammrtech asks “Can the internet handle COVID-19?”

By Joseph Roy of Hammrtech

CARYVILLE, TN (WLAF) – The current COVID-19 crisis has businesses scrambling to find ways to keep their employees safe while also maintaining productivity. Working from home with the right setup can help employers accomplish this with ease; and Hammrtech, a software development company and managed service provider in Caryville, is here to help.

As with most Information Technology (IT) companies, we provide business continuity plans for our customers, and over the last few weeks we have been implementing these plans to keep our customers productive.

IT professionals globally are asking themselves this simple question: with the increased strain on the network infrastructure from remote workers, can the technology keep up with the demand? The answer is not clear.

Many businesses are taking drastic steps to try and reduce latency globally. For example, YouTube is going to initiate all videos in Standard Definition format when played instead of High Definition to try and decrease latency. Netflix, Disney, YouTube and Instagram have all started throttling speeds in Europe by 25% in order to handle the increased demand for the continent, as it is locked down during this pandemic.

An increase in Virtualized Private Network (VPN) traffic is straining residential cable providers as well as businesses’ internal network.

Why is this an issue?  Doesn’t a remote worker do the same job they would do from inside their office? While it is true that a remote workers’ tasks change very little based upon their physical location, the way information is accessed is very different. This is where a VPN really comes into play.

If you imagine that the Internet is a large highway with hundreds of thousands of lanes of traffic, each off-ramp is a network connected to the highway of information. A VPN gives you a dedicated route encapsulated to your specific off-ramp.

So, are VPN connections all that is “breaking” the internet, and causing slow speeds? No, along with the increased VPN traffic, comes the increased streaming traffic. With schools closed and parents busy trying to work, kids are left to stream and game for hours during the day. The majority of rural America is still using Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), which is technology from 2003. As more and more people start to use the internet constantly, the nation’s aging DSL technology is starting to buckle.

About the Author: My name is Joseph Roy and I am a veteran and a Campbell County resident with over 8 years of experience in the IT community. I work for Hammrtech, LLC, a business in Caryville.  Our team of experts would like to offer a free 30-minute consultation to any small business owner as part of our COVID-19 response. This meeting will take place remotely.  Please click here to schedule a consultation today.  (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 03/28/2020-NOON)