Remote Work Support Operations During COVID‑19: VPN Scaling, Desktop Support, and Video/Phone Conferencing

In late February 2020, as the COVID‑19 pandemic spread across China, the central government urged enterprises to adopt remote work; the company's internal network operations team responded by forming a Remote Work Guarantee Special Task Force led by Wang Xiao, assigning clear responsibilities for network, desktop, and system support.

The task force identified three key dimensions: a Network Assurance Group responsible for internal and external network, VPN, and bandwidth; a Desktop Support Group handling all employee endpoints; and a System Assurance Group covering email, cloud storage, video and phone conferencing, and other business systems.

To address the VPN capacity shortfall for the projected 4,300+ remote users, the team expanded the IP address pool, enabled SSL‑VPN on the core firewall, opened the VPN to three major ISPs, increased total bandwidth to 900 M, authored a user manual, and implemented a one‑click on/off policy, completing the upgrade by February 3.

Statistical monitoring showed daily VPN usage rising to over 3,200 connections—six times the normal level—without any service failures, confirming the effectiveness of the scaling measures.

For mobile office challenges, the team exported DNS records, re‑configured DNS servers, added VPN routes on core switches, and performed DNS hijacking to allow seamless access to the Tech&Local test Wi‑Fi network without modifying host files, ensuring project testing could continue remotely.

Desktop support was reinforced with a 24‑hour hotline, daily system inspections, detailed work‑day reports, and over 500 documentation pages covering software usage and troubleshooting, resulting in more than 500 support incidents handled between February 3 and February 22.

Video and phone conferencing were also upgraded: Polycom video conferencing was optimized by adjusting system policies, enabling SIP, adding HK link entry and GP mapping, and increasing bandwidth, supporting over 30 meetings with up to 25 simultaneous participants; Zoom hybrid‑cloud services were deployed within two days, providing multiple access methods and high user satisfaction.

Collaboration with HR, Administration, and Information Systems ensured uninterrupted onboarding and off‑boarding, with remote equipment provisioning and an unattended entry/exit workflow.

Overall, the internal network operations team maintained stable, high‑performance remote work services throughout the pandemic, and committed to further improving stability, efficiency, and user experience in the post‑COVID era.