Please Don't Break The Internet.

This is a public service announcement that I hope you will take seriously. With almost everyone working from home over the next month, learning from home and even providing medical care from home or remote, I'd like everyone to think about the impact of what this could mean for all of us.

Unfortunately, the Internet is not some magical unicornish thing that has unlimited capacity - it is actually finite. The significant amount of added stress on networks will create an enormous strain on the internet, cloud applications and platforms on a global scale. There will be more people and kids at home watching YouTube, Netflix, Hulu etc. and everything will start to slow down. Here are some considerations for your home, business, community and our planet:

1 - Limit your consumption of online streaming - music, movies etc. Dust off your CDs, MP3s, DVDs and Laser Discs; you may need them.

2 - Turn off the transmission of video in your video conferencing applications or at least try to limit the number of people transmitting video simultaneously (It pains me to say this, because I live in video conferencing every day, but it is the best thing to do right now)

3- The Internet, your apps, your movies etc. may slow and come to a crawl at times, and may even be unavailable for a while. Remember, to have patience, treat customer service employees with respect and rethink your expectations of what 'normal' should be. This isn't the first time we've seen mass slowdowns on The Internet, but this could in fact, happen a lot over the next few weeks/months. Monitor facebook & twitter feeds of your favorite cable, internet, power companies so you know what's happening in real-time.

4 - If you have home automation in place, some of them, especially hard drives that sync to the cloud, and video cameras that store their data in the cloud, consume a lot of bandwidth. I'm not asking you to turn off your cameras, but it is something to think about - do you really need 20 cameras recording to the cloud 24x7?

5 - If you can throttle your use of the internet - throttle it. Personally I'm putting all our kids on their own network and throttling them down; I'm just telling them its slow and there is nothing I can do about it.

I'm sure there are a lot more things you can do, but this is a start. Remember, First Responders, Healthcare institutions and others will be using the same, not so magical internet to get to people that need help, to provide assistance and medical care. There are also a ton of organizations and business that will need to work from home to keep our economies going.

My simple ask is for you to be cognizant about this and to do your part. And please share this message.