Your internet connection is like plumbing; you only notice when things foul up. Does the system of pipes and nodes have the capacity to support us now we’re forced to work from home?

While packets of data flow around the Internet, just like the way people used to flow around the London Underground, in pre-Covid times, the web has entrances and exits where the data arrives and departs. Can this Internet plumbing sustain the increase in traffic?

Can the Internet plumbing cope?

Despite recent spikes in demand the system was built for this eventuality. While traffic has risen, up 12% in the first months of the pandemic, there has been a similar fall in corporate, that’s to say office-based traffic, as fewer people have been working from the office.

There will still be hiccups. According to Mark Jackson of ISPreview.co.uk, an industry site. mobile networks are “generally adapted to a considerably lower level of data traffic passing over their networks than fixed-line broadband,”

People who rely on mobile broadband may find occasional lags if lots of people use their phones for heavy-duty tasks such as streaming the latest box set, which may explain the occasional wobble from your streaming service.

Is the Internet plumbing safe?

Warnings have come from the The National Cyber Security Centre, an arm of GCHQ the – UK Government’s signals intelligence centre, which warned that criminals are taking advantage of fear over coronavirus to target internet users with “phishing” attacks.

Many home offices are merely a corporate tentacle complete with a virtual private network (VPN), remotely managed workstations with IT experts at the corporate offices. But others lack any kind of support. If this is you check out these 5 Things you can do to Secure your Home Office.

So, while the Internet plumbing may be built to deal with the change in traffic use there are increased risks to people using their computers to do work related tasks, which their security settings may not be designed to handle.