Measuring Changes in Regional Network Traffic Due to COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Measures

TL;DR

This study quantifies how COVID-19 stay-at-home measures significantly altered regional network traffic, increasing online meeting use and decreasing human-driven traffic, with implications for network planning during crises.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of regional network traffic changes during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders using Netflow data, highlighting shifts in usage patterns and security incidents.

Findings

Human-driven traffic decreased to 70%.

Online meeting traffic increased up to 5 times.

Network attacks increased during the period.

Abstract

During the 2020 pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, many countries implemented stay-at-home measures, which led to many businesses and schools moving from in-person to online mode of operation. We analyze sampled Netflow records at a medium-sized US Regional Optical Network to quantify the changes in the network traffic due to stay-at-home measures in that region. We find that human-driven traffic in the network decreases to around 70%, and mostly shifts to local ISPs, while VPN and online meeting traffic increases up to 5 times. We also find that networks adopt a variety of online meeting solutions and favor one but continue using a few others. We find that educational and government institutions experience large traffic changes, but aim to keep their productivity via increased online meetings. Some scientific traffic also reduces possibly leading to loss of research productivity. Businesses mostly lose their traffic and few show VPN or online meeting activity. Most network prefixes experience large loss of live addresses but a handful increase their liveness. We also find increased incidence of network attacks. Our findings can help plan network provisioning and management to prepare for future possible infection outbreaks and natural disasters.