ISPs are hit hardest by COVID-19 disruption

We've already seen how lockdowns have been affecting internet speeds around the world, but what other impact has the pandemic been having on the web?

A new Internet Performance Report from ThousandEyes looks at the availability and performance of internet-related networks, including those of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), public cloud, Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Domain Name System (DNS) providers.

Measuring performance over time, the report examines the impacts of changing internet usage due to COVID-19 and how those impacts have varied across different regions and providers.

Between January and July, cloud providers experienced around 400 outages globally compared with more than 4500 in ISP networks. Relative to total outages, more than 80 percent occurred within ISP networks and less than 10 percent within cloud provider networks.

"The Internet is inherently unpredictable and outages are inevitable even under normal conditions. However, with the overnight transition to a remote workforce, remote schooling and remote entertainment that many countries experienced in March, we saw outages spike to unprecedented levels -- especially among Internet Service Providers who seem to have been more vulnerable to disruptions than cloud providers," says Angelique Medina, research author and director of product marketing at ThousandEyes. "With the Internet Performance Report, businesses can benchmark Internet performance pre and post COVID-19 and plan for a more resilient IT environment as they continue to build out infrastructures that can manage the external dependencies on cloud and Internet networks that employee and consumer experiences now rely on."

Overall though the infrastructure of the internet has held up well, suggesting an overall healthy capacity, scalability, and the operator agility needed to adjust to unforeseen demands. Negative performance indicators, such as traffic delay, loss, and jitter have generally remained within tolerable ranges, showing no evidence of systemic network duress.

You can get the full report on the ThousandEyes site and there's an infographic summary of the findings below.

Image credit: Giovanni_Cancemi / depositphotos