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The types of interventions that we may expect to make noticeable changes in Internet traffic patterns,  and possible changes in ping jitter due to changes in path utilizationsutilization, include:

• Lockdowns;
• Closing/suspending schools, colleges, sporting events, public meetings etc;
  • Thus we might expect to see impacts on hosts at universities. However, as pointed out by Wade Hong of Carleton University  "Due to the students in residence being asked to vacate for social distancing. With many university LMSes (Learning Management Systems) now cloud-based, and the use of cloud media services for streaming of recorded content, the potential bottlenecks have moved from the institution to these services."   
• Imposing a curfew;
• Calling a state of emergency;
• It is probable that the increases in cases and deaths that are publicized will result in changed behaviors and people voluntarily sheltering in place working from home etc. however we do not regard this as an intervention.

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To get a better idea of the overall impact we looked in more detail at 18 26 major countries in Africa that included 62 76 monitored hosts in Southern Africa (Top Level Domains: ZA, LS, BW, NM), East Africa (BI, ER, ET, KY, MG, ML, MZ, RW, SD, TZ, UG, ZM, ZW), and  Central Africa (AO, CM, CD, GA)

• There was There  10 hosts (1 host in Mozambique, 2 in Botswana, 1 in Cameroon, 1 in Eritrea, 1 in Ethiopia, 1 in Sudan, 1 in Tanzania, 1 in the Republic of South Africa, and 1 in Zambia) that had insufficient PingER data to draw any conclusions.
• We could find no interventions of the above kind for Burundi (2 hosts), Eritrea (1 host), and Mozambique (4 hosts)  and Rwanda (2 hosts).
• Of the remaining 50 hosts, 24 had noticeable 60 hosts:
  • 17 had immediately recognizable  IPDV changes within a week of the start of an intervention, 
  • 9 had associated changes that required further investigation (typically averaging the IPDV for a period of 14 days before and after the interventions)
  • the remaining 34 either had no significant (i.e. had a difference that lasted for at least a week) changes or the change did not match an intervention.

Possible Future work

Add data for South Asia.

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