The short answer to why the Internet has survived a huge surge in traffic during the global coronavirus pandemic is that the infrastructure that makes up its backbone was designed to survive just such an emergency. Network planning, traffic engineering and cutting-edge equipment can take most of the credit for the Internet’s ability to adjust in times of need.
When work-at-home orders came down in March, the source of internet traffic shifted dramatically. Rather than coming from business sites connected by high-bandwidth links, suddenly significant amounts of traffic was coming from private homes, dumping more traffic onto the access networks during what would otherwise be off-peak hours.
