RAPID: Coordination and Summarization of Studies of Cyberspace during COVID-19 Pandemic

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal describes a task as part of the NSF's rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular, their response to the question of how the cyberinfrastructure is dealing with traffic surges, and changing and expanding patterns of use. The proposed work seeks to integrate the output of a set of diverse, individually funded Internet and network measurement efforts into a single comprehensive report that describes how the Internet responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. This project will facilitate sharing of tools and other measurement know-how, set up one or more workshops to share methodologies and interim results, and develop a report that integrates output of the different measurement efforts, in coordination with the measurement PIs. While the technical knowledge on the state of the Internet will be gathered by the individual projects, the technical merit of this complementary effort arises in the coordination and facilitation, which will benefit the individual projects, as well as in generating a comprehensive report. Furthermore, this work will contribute towards efficiency and better outcomes by cross-fertilizing ideas among them. This effort coordinates results from technical assessment done by individual network measurement projects and, as a result, will present a comprehensive understanding of the state of the Internet performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a comprehensive report will give policy makers, consumer advocacy groups, and ordinary citizens the best view of how the components of cyberspace have functioned and evolved during this time to meet their needs, and for future planning. The results from this effort will be made available at http://living-online.csail.mit.edu. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.