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CFP: IAB COVID-19 Network Impacts Workshop 2020

Please consider submitting a paper to the IAB workshop on COVID-19 Network Impacts. The workshop is organised by the Internet Architecture Board, and will be held online in the week starting 9 November 2020. Paper submissions are due on 9 October 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on people’s lives, societies, and economies around the globe. But it also had a large impact on networking. With large numbers of people working from home or otherwise depending on the network for their daily lives, network traffic has surged.

In general, the Internet has coped relatively well with this traffic growth. While the situation has not been perfect, it's been interesting to see how the technology, operators, and service providers have been able to respond to large changes in traffic patterns, and to continue to provide good Internet service.

It would also be interesting to understand what types of network management and capacity expansion actions were taken. Anecdotal evidence points to Internet and service providers tracking how their services are used, and in many cases adjusting services to accommodate the new traffic patterns, from dynamic allocation of compute resources to more complex changes. The impacts of this crisis are therefore a potential opportunity to understand the impact of traffic shifts and growth more generally, or to prepare for future situations, crisis or otherwise, that impact networking. Or even allow us to adjust the technology to be even better suited to respond to changes.

The IAB is holding this workshop to convene interested researchers, network operators and network management experts, and Internet technologists to share their experiences. The scope of the workshop includes:

Interested participants are invited to submit position papers on the workshop topics. The position papers form the background for actual discussions in the workshop. The workshop itself will be virtual meeting, focused on discussions based on the input rather than go through each submitted paper.

Submissions are due on 9 October 2020, and the workshop will be held online in the week starting 9 November 2020. Full details and submission instructions can be found on the workshop website.