Hello friends,

Today OONI and M-Lab co-published a report examining network performance in Northern Italy during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can read the report on the following sites:

* OONI: https://ooni.org/post/2020-network-performance-covid19-italy/

* M-Lab: https://www.measurementlab.net/blog/measurement-observations-on-network-perf...

We analyzed NDT measurements collected from the provinces in the Milan metropolitan area between 1st January 2020 to 15th June 2020 with the goal of examining whether network performance was affected amid the surge in internet use during the nationwide lockdown.

In summary, we observe:

* Significant increase in the number of NDT tests run per day around the beginning of Italy’s nationwide lockdown (which started on 10th March 2020);

* Reduced NDT download and upload speed results during the nationwide lockdown in Italy (between March 2020 to May 2020);

* Improved NDT download and upload speed results from early May 2020 onwards, when the Italian government gradually started to lift the strict lockdown measures.

As the available measurements suggest that there may be a correlation between increased internet use and reduced network performance, they highlight the need to invest in internet infrastructure that is more robust and sustainable in the long-term. They also highlight the need for more longitudinal measurements collected from more stable vantage points to improve our understanding of network performance issues.

You can run NDT and contribute measurements on network performance through the OONI Probe apps (https://ooni.org/install/) or by deploying the Murakami tool (https://github.com/m-lab/murakami) in a Docker container.

Please help share our report: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1284162147249987584

Thanks,

~ OONI team.