*UKHotViewsExtra* Why COVID-19 will not break the Internet

One of the most impressive sub plots to COVID-19 and a big “feather in the cap” of the tech industry has been the relative ease with which huge swathes of people have shifted to working, studying and socialising from home. Whilst it’s sadly true that the health, social and economic consequences of the virus will be catastrophic, had COVID struck just 20 years ago the outcome could have been so much more disruptive. Working from home with dial-up internet and a “Nokia brick” for company was just never going to cut it.

Thankfully the technology has improved dramatically, and the robustness of the infrastructure and the performance of the internet backbone has been very impressive, as loads have increased and patterns of usage have shifted. Indeed, the companies and organisations behind the internet deserve a lot of credit for quietly enabling all this to be possible.

We caught up recently with Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNIC one of the companies that manages a lot of the infrastructure on which the internet sits. CentralNIC’s software platform allows businesses globally to buy subscriptions to domain names, used for their own websites and email, as well protecting brands online. Crawford himself has worked in internet infrastructure for much of his career going back to the Sydney Olympics where he ran the websites.

We wanted to get his perspective on the current unprecedented situation having seen huge spikes in internet usage (Vodafone has reported internet traffic increases of 50% across Europe) prompting European Commissioner Thierry Breton to take action to prevent network degradation launching the #SwitchToStandard initiative.

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Posted by Marc Hardwick at '08:23' - Tagged: covid-19