Looks like the flu won’t just negatively affect the nation’s workers. The feds are warning that it could put a big strain on the Internet as well.

That’s because more and more employees are choosing to telecommute, either because they’re sick themselves, or they want to avoid the germ-infested office.

The Government Accountability Office reported recently that if the flu reaches a pandemic, a surge in telecommuting and children accessing video files and games at home could clog local networks.

And the government has no plan to deal with that problem, the GAO said.

Health and safety folks have been warning IT and upper managers for years that they need to have some plan in place to deal with flu in the workplace. But few organizations have bothered to do so.

The federal government seems to be no exception.

Network operators such as Comcast, AT&T, Cox and Verizon are limited in their options. They could add bandwidth capacity and lay down private lines for essential workers, but that is expensive and would take too long. Shutting down certain Web sites or prioritizing traffic could run into technical and regulatory hurdles, the report said.

An Internet service provider could decide to slow all connections in a certain neighborhood, but then that network operator would be violating contracts with customers, says the report.

“Private Internet providers have limited ability to prioritize traffic or take other actions that could assist critical tele-workers. Some actions, such as reducing customers’ transmission speeds or blocking popular Web sites, could negatively impact e-commerce and require government authorization,” the GAO report said.

Tags: flu, Internet, telecommuting