Tech & Biz

Bird Flu Pandemic Could Choke the Net

by willlin | February 13, 2007 at 03:58 pm

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If a pandemic were to occur, many companies and organizations would
ask their staffs to work from home. The impact of millions of
additional people using the Internet from home might require individuals and companies to voluntarily restrain themselves from surfing to high-bandwidth sites,
such as YouTube. If people didn't comply, the government might step in
and limit Net usage. The scenario is not far-fetched: last year at the
World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a group of telecom and government
officials conducted a pandemic exercise based on a hypothetical breakout of bird flu in central Europe. The results weren't pretty.

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matte

at 16:38 on February 13th, 2007

Please atribute to original source. Using snips rather than highlights does this better.

Even if someone was working from home, what difference would it make if they were accessing YouTube from there or work? Unless the implication is because people working at home would slack off and spend their tiem surfing the net instead of working...

The greatest threat would be if companies wanted to make extensive use of video conferencing. Email accounts for minimal data transfer by comparison.