[Bloody Sam Roberts]

the Internet's infrastructure could be overwhelmed by people logging in from home.

Non sequitur.

An ill worker staying home and logging in...is a worker who would be using the internet at work anyway. Net difference...0.000.

[Pessimist]

That was my first thought too. But consider that if you normally communicate with many other people in one location at your firm, your traffic does not traverse the internet: it simply stays on your subnet.

So actually, if huge quantities of people stayed home and logged in, it would increase the traffic on the internet.

I doubt if it’s anything to seriously worry about though.

[TSgt]

Non sequitur. An ill worker staying home and logging in...is a worker who would be using the internet at work anyway. Net difference...0.000.

Their total bandwidth usage would be higher as most telecommuters establish a virtual private network (VPN) to their company via the Internet for access to corporate systems. General Internet surfing would be a zero sum however there would be increased network use from multiple VPN's.