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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 utilizations, include:

• Lockdowns;
• Closing of /suspending schools, colleges, sporting events, public meetings ,etc;
• 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.

The typical impacts are:

• A sustained (for a week or more) significant increase or decrease in IPDV values for some or all hosts in the country correlated with an intervention that may be expected to change traffic patterns.
• A change in the difference in the weekday vs the weekend performance (bear in mind all times are UTC) correlated with an intervention.
• An increase or decrease in the variability day to day of the IPDV

To get a better idea of the overall impact we looked in more detail at 18 major countries in Africa that included over 60 hosts.62 monitored hosts. 

• There was insufficient PingER data for 2 countries: Cameroon and Eritrea. Each had 1 host being monitored. 
• There was also 1 host in Mozambique that had insufficient data to draw any conclusions.
• We could find no interventions of the above kind for Burundi (2 hosts), Eritrea (1 host), Mozambique (4 hosts)  and Rwanda (1 host).
• Of the remaining 53 hosts, 24 had noticeable IPDV changes within a week of the start of an intervention.

Future work

Add data for South Asia.

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