The impact of covid on network utilization: an analysis on domain popularity

The emergency related to the Coronavirus has impacted everyone's life. From the first weeks of 2020, in China, and for weeks later, in other countries of the world, isolation and social distancing measures have been adopted to avoid the spread of the virus, forcing people worldwide to isolate themselves in their homes. This represents a unique case of study to understand the impact of such measures on Internet utilization.In this paper, we provide insights on the use of different categories of Internet applications. We use two complementary sources of information: the lists from Alexa and Cisco Umbrella regarding the top 1 Million websites and domains used worldwide. Our results show that, during lockdowm time, the most used applications have been Youtube followed by Netflix, Facebook, Whatsapp and Skype. This shows how users have looked for consolation in entertainment apps such as youtube, Netflix, and in social media like Facebook. App of messaging services and collaboration, like WhatsApp and Skype, have been used to communicate with friends and families while also used for smart working. Contrasting the results from the two lists, we also uncover important difference in the usage from different kids of devices. We believe that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a very interesting situation from the network utilization point of view and we shed light on how such situation impacted the use of the Internet applications.