  The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way of living of billions of
people in a very short time frame. In this paper, we evaluate the impact on the
Internet latency caused by the increased amount of human activities that are
carried out on-line. The study focuses on Italy, which experienced significant
restrictions imposed by local authorities, but results about Spain, France,
Germany, Sweden, and the whole of Europe are also included. The analysis of a
large set of measurements shows that the impact on the network can be
significant, especially in terms of increased variability of latency. In Italy
we observed that the standard deviation of the average additional delay -- the
additional time with respect to the minimum delay of the paths in the region --
during lockdown is ~3-4 times as much as the value before the pandemic.
Similarly, in Italy, packet loss is ~2-3 times as much as before the pandemic.
The impact is not negligible also for the other countries and for the whole of
Europe, but with different levels and distinct patterns.
