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For more than a year, concerns over whether the Internet would stay up during a pandemic have been bandied about. There have been studies suggesting that it could, in a severe pandemic, experience significant failures in a matter of days or weeks.
The problem is multi-layered, and not susceptible to a single solution.
First, it takes people to run, and maintain the Internet. And they will be just as affected by a pandemic as the rest of the world. Remove 40% of that workforce, and the net's ability to stay up is degraded.
Secondly, the demands on the Internet are expected to skyrocket during a pandemic. People would be encouraged to work from home via the net. Millions of school kids would either be taking lessons over the net, or spending their free time while stuck at home, surfing. Millions of people, suddenly faced with a pandemic and awakened to the dangers, would be using the net to learn as much as they could, and to seek out news.
And of course, if other infrastructure failures occur, such as telephone systems, or power, these too would compromise the Internet.
This, from Computerworld, on the potentials for net strangulation.
Flu pandemic could choke Internet, requiring usage restrictions
Expected surge in online traffic puts telework plans at risk
Patrick Thibodeau
February 12, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Many companies and government agencies are counting on legions of teleworkers to keep their operations running in the event of an influenza pandemic. But those plans may quickly run aground as millions of people turn to the Internet for news and even entertainment, potentially producing a bandwidth-choking surge in online traffic.
Such a surge would almost certainly prompt calls to restrict or prioritize traffic, such as blocking video transmissions wherever possible, according to business continuity planners who gathered on Friday at a SunGard Availability Systems hot-site facility in northern New Jersey to consider the impact of a pandemic on the Internet.
Businesses as well as home users likely would be asked to voluntarily restrict high-bandwidth traffic, the planners said. And if asking didn't work, they warned, government action to restrict traffic might well follow.
"Is there a need for a YouTube during a national emergency?" asked John Thomas, vice president of enterprise systems at a large, New York-based financial institution that he asked not be identified.
Patrick Thibodeau has written in the past on pandemic concerns, and is doing an important service by reminding the IT community of the dangers we face. The entire article is worthy of your perusal.
