Keeping the Internet up and running in times of crisis

 Maintain access to hardware supplies, datacentre facilities and ensure the mobility of engineering staff and skilled workforce

Logistical and supply chain shortages: Network operators need to be able to order and receive new hardware and consumables to implement network upgrades and replace components that fail. If countries close borders, shortages or delays in the global supply chains could prevent network operators from repairing an outage or upgrading their capacity. Governments should ensure the continuity of supplies, particularly during border closures. Efforts to encourage the sharing of critical resources (e.g. the European IX association) are important and should continue.

Access restrictions to key communication facilities: Datacentres play a critical role, but most facilities are restricting access in response to the outbreak in order to prioritise scheduled maintenance by established customers. Some datacentres have gone one step further to prohibit access by customers, requiring the use of datacentre-supplied “remote hands” instead. Governments should ensure that staff can access their equipment under controlled conditions in the case of a critical need. In Sweden, for example, the national crisis co-ordination group for the communication sector is maintaining an active dialogue with the Swedish regulator (PTS) on datacentre access. While PTS does currently not have instruments to legally mandate datacentres to take specific actions, this is under review.

Reduced availability of field engineers and skilled workforce due to mobility restrictions: Some governments have imposed mobility restrictions that could affect the workforce available to perform critical operations in datacentres, on cable paths, at cell sites, and other critical infrastructural locations, as well as customer sites. Governments should explicitly list communication-engineering staff as essential workers and grant them permissions to access datacentres and other critical sites to keep services running. In India, critical network operation centre staff are permitted to travel during confinement and in the United States, all communication workers are considered “essential” and are permitted to travel.

 Anticipate demand and prevent congestion

Core switching capacity at IXPs: While individual network-facing ports may become congested, IXPs typically operate their core switching fabric at a fraction of the theoretical capacity of their backplanes and interconnects. In Ireland, the INEX increased its inter-switch interconnection capacity by 100 gigabytes per second and its available port capacity by approximately 30% to 4.2 Tbps in response to the increased traffic. Member ports continue to be upgraded on a near-daily basis. If other exchanges have similar ratios of capacity to utilisation, this would be an encouraging sign that capacity at IXPs will not become a bottleneck.

Network operators with overloaded connection points (ports): Larger network operators connect to one or more IXPs. In many cases, network operators may need to upgrade their capacity by adding additional ports or increasing the speed of their port before it becomes congested. A few of the largest exchange points have automated platforms that allow port upgrades with very limited human interaction. In the more frequent cases that in-person human interaction is needed, governments should ensure that technicians can access IXPs during mobility restrictions.

Congestion in private interconnections: Some larger network operators depend upon private interconnections with their largest counterparts. These private interconnections are fibre cross-connects within datacentres, between the routers of the largest access networks (which deliver bandwidth to users) and the largest or most critical content networks (which provide services such as web sites, gaming, video conferencing and streaming). A congested interconnection harms both networks and should be avoided.

Lack of direct interconnections: In some countries, big communication operators may refuse to interconnect domestically with other networks, forcing smaller networks to send domestic traffic over large distances to IXPs in other countries and back, leading to higher costs and lower quality. Two large operators within Canada, for instance, peer at five and three IXPs, respectively, all within the United States, forcing 64% of Canadian domestic traffic to flow across the border through the United States. This greatly increases the costs and network instability experienced by Canadian customers. A lack of direct interconnection negatively affects the overall Internet performance in a country, while increasing costs and risk. In Italy, one of the most affected countries, Telecom Italia has agreed to open peering at two exchange points to improve network experience between 6 April and 30 June 2020.

 Monitor the performance of key Internet infrastructure services

Essential Internet infrastructure services such as the domain name system (DNS) are seeing an increase in utilisation. Given that the performance of the DNS is a prerequisite to reaching any service on the Internet, maintaining unimpeded access to the DNS is of crucial importance. Operators of DNS authoritative servers should monitor the load to ensure service availability as some operators, particularly of country-code top-level domains, perform domain resolution for public health awareness websites and related online emergency services. Governments could also review the configuration and standards-compliance of their national top-level domains.

 Put unused spectrum into service

Reduced mobility of people and the consumption of bandwidth intensive applications (i.e. video streaming) over mobile networks that are sometimes used as a substitute for fixed broadband may generate congestion as there will be more devices competing for the same cell capacity. In addition to edge capacity, there might also be capacity issues when transferring the unexpectedly high load from the cell to the mobile operator network. Regulators and policy makers could consider making additional spectrum available on a temporary basis for mobile operators to add capacity to the over-the-air interface. In the United States, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile were granted approval from the regulator, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), to reach a commercial agreement with satellite TV provider Dish to borrow the company’s unused wireless spectrum to add capacity to address congestion created by COVID-19 quarantines. In addition, the FCC granted operators temporary access to spectrum in the 5.9 gigahertz (GHz) band to meet increased rural broadband demand and granted use of spectrum for 60 days in the AWS-4 and AWS-3 band. In Ireland, the regulator ComReg has approved plans to release extra radio spectrum in the 700 megahertz and 2.6 GHz bands to add capacity for mobile phone and data connectivity. Another measure to expand mobile connectivity consists in alleviating administration burdens and streamlining rights of way for a more rapid deployment of networks.

 Accelerate the transition from copper to fibre to address congestion in xDSL networks

Residential broadband operators might suffer from congestion due to the inherent asymmetrical capacity of xDSL technology and oversubscription. xDSL networks use the telephone infrastructure that was primarily built for low-speed analogue voice service. Most xDSL broadband services have moderate download speeds but very low upload speeds. This makes them poorly suited for services requiring higher upload speeds which are necessary to support work from home and use. While transitioning from copper to fibre takes longer-term planning, broadband providers could be encouraged in the medium term to deploy fibre deeper into their networks to gradually phase out xDSL technology and replace it with FTTx technologies. Such investments would add resilience to combatting epidemics like COVID-19 and prepare for a post-crisis environment which is likely to require more connectivity and network capacity.