[LINK] Are Euro Networks more strained than NBN's?

[Roger Clarke]

[Aside:  It's nice that the Australian government has taken (in)action 
to avoid video-derived congestion of Oz Internet infrastructure.

[By failing to provide a Medicare code for tele-health consultations, 
and hence making individuals pay for them personally, and in full, 
they've greatly reduced demand.]


 From an itNews article this morning:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/youtube-amazon-prime-forgo-streaming-quality-to-relieve-european-networks-539673

YouTube and Amazon Prime will sacrifice streaming quality in the EU to 
help avert internet gridlock as tens of millions of Europeans, confined 
by the coronavirus outbreak, switch to working from home.

Alphabet Inc's YouTube and Amazon joined Netflix in responding to a call 
by European Union industry chief Thierry Breton to cut picture quality 
to prevent overload.
...
Telecoms providers from Vodafone to Deutsche Telekom have reported a 
spike in data traffic, forcing Breton to issue his pre-emptive call.
...
Drei Austria said it was seeing a 50 percent increase in voice telephony 
and 15 percent in peak data loads.

He wants networks to be able to run essential services such as 
healthcare and online learning for house-bound children during the 
coronavirus outbreak.

...

Experts warn that reducing streaming rates may only give temporary 
relief and the dilemma of whether to discriminate between essential and 
non-essential traffic will resurface.

"In an ideal world, network operators would obviously upgrade their 
infrastructure and invest," said Eric Broockman, chief technology 
officer of Extreme Networks, a US. network management company.

"In the short term, what network operators could do to reduce the 
pressure on their networks and ensure connectivity for all is to 
deprioritise non-essential traffic."


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA 

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University