2‑92 Telecommunication Radio Broadcast

Study of Usage Tendencies of the Remote
Access Service
KANAI Akira

HIROSE Masato

Remote access environments support various ways of working In the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020
(hereinafter referred to as “Tokyo 2020 Games”) most users used remote access daily after the new coronavirus
pandemic By analyzing these session logs it is possible to understand attendance records and the operational status of theorganization for use in operations This article shows a calendar‑style heat map of the logs focusing on overall andindividuals and discusses the characteristics of remote access usage related to the stage of the event the day of the week
and national holidays
Keywords：Tokyo 2020 Games Remote access Trend analysis Visualization

1．Introduction

article describes two topics
The data we analyzed covered approximately 20

Remote access provides various environments and amonths from January 1 2020 to September 14 2021

location‑independent work style is becoming realized

and included 1 215 753 logs of successful remote accessHowever remote access environments are convenientconnections The total number of users was 7 077 notand have the inherent risk of being at the border ofincluding the logs of failed authentication attempts

intrusion which should be monitored intensively inoperations In a large‑scale event such as the Tokyo
2020 Gamesthe number of staff members and2．Usage Trends during the Tokyo 2020 Games

connection sources may rapidly increase or decrease

Figure 1 shows the number of remote access users per

depending on the preparation stage It is hard to findday expressed in color depth From left to right theanomalies mechanically by trend analysis

figures show the number of users for each day in 2020

In addition the new coronavirus pandemic caused aand 2021 such as the calendar‑like figure From top to

significant increase in the number of remote accessbottom each row indicates the weeks of the year andusers After the surge of the new coronavirus pandemic

each column indicates the days of the weekThe

most users routinely use remote access We attempted

leftmost cell indicates Sunday and the rightmost cellto investigate remote access logs by group or by theindicates Saturday Each cell represents the number ofindividual to understand attendance records and theusers on a corresponding day as a color depth In theoperation status of the organization for operational This

figure white is zero and the darkest red indicates 3 529
users The calendar‑like display is adequate to visualize
usage trends by day of the week such as many staff

KANAI Akira
Innovation Center NTT Communications Corporation
HIROSE Masato
Innovation Center NTT Communications Corporation

The Journal of The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers Vol 105 No 8 Supplement pp 71‑75 August 2022

members do not work on Saturdays

Sundaysornational holidays The following are the trends providedby this chart© 2022 The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers

Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 202071

Figure 1(()

Until March 2020 the number of users wasusers/day in June 2020

about 200 users/day It always exceeded 2 000()

The decreasing trend continued

users/day from the end of the same month()

In January 2021)

72

Number of Users per Day

On April 28 2020 the maximum number ofthe number of accesses

increased again to about 2 200 users/day andusers was 3 529 users/day The number of users

continued until March 2021

exceeded 3 000 users/day on weekdays in Maycreased to about 1 400 users/day from March 222020 and gradually decreased to about 2 500

2021

It gradually de-THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS

Figure 2Total Daily Connection Time of Staff Member (A)()

decreased to about 1 200 users/day

low For example on January 11 2021 (second()

The color depth at both ends of each column is

row from the top second cell from the left) thelight except during the Tokyo 2020 Games period

number of users was about 200 users/day about)

90% less than the 2 000 users/day for the previous(Around July 20 2021 the number of users

The number of users is about the same every

day from Monday to Friday of the same week

are occasional days when the number of users is

Friday and following Monday

throughout the entire period Nevertheless there
Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 202073

3．Overall Usage Trendʼs Consideration
and Individual Usage Trends
We think the reasons for each of these events shown inSection 2 are due to the following factors()

On April 7 2020 the government declared a(ｄ)We interviewed (A) about the reasons for thesetrends The summary of the interview is as follows(ａ)(ｂ)

employees to work at home))

Tuesdays and Fridays as remote work days toavoid being caught in proximity

On January 8 2021 the government declared astate of emergency for Tokyo((ｃ)

From June 2021

On March 21 2021 the government lifted arequired him to go to the office every day inpreparation for the Tokyo 2020 Games (reducingTokyo 2020 Games increased from April 2021((A) started tasks thatstate of emergency for Tokyo Then the number)

his working from home opportunities)of staff members involved in preparations for the((A) made a weekly work schedule for eachsection under his management and designatedOn May 28 2020 the government lifted a stateof emergency for Tokyo((A) started working from home in preparation
for the declaration of a state of emergency

state of emergency for Tokyo and encouraged(From July 10 2021 dark red was observed
every 6 days(ｄ)

From July 10 2021 (A) began a six‑day work

In July 2021 the opening ceremony was held

cycle that includes four consecutive days of officeand many staff members mainly gathered in thework (A) used remote access for a long period

office during the Tokyo 2020 Gameson the day before his office workday to assess the)situation)

Few staff members work because it is Saturdays or Sundays()

Few staff members work because it is aThe analysis for remote access focused on individuals
shows similar characteristics to the overall trend It also

national holiday

shows changes in the work from home cycle according toThis calendar‑style figure can easily explain theevents () and () caused by days of the week andthe setting of remote work days and the event phase foreach individual

national holidays This method also effectively analyzes
individual and group logs to clarify the organizationʼs4．Conclusion

attendance record and operation status Figure 2 shows
the daily remote work time for a specific staff member

IT infrastructures are being used more and more(A) as a sample of focusing on an individual He had

closely in our daily lives after the surge of the new

belonged to the operation team (A) was an administra-coronavirus pandemic This article presented remotetor who organized the group and sometimes used remote

access session logs in a calendar‑style heat map foraccess on weekends due to his duties

overall and individuals Furthermore we also showed

Figure 2 differs from Figure 1 Each cell represents

and explained the characteristics and considerations(A)ʼs total daily connection time as color depth The

related to event phases days of the week and holidays

white on the cell figure is a 0‑second connection and theThis method can also investigate the characteristics ofdarkest red indicates a 24‑hour connection The trends

each group by focusing on attributes such as teams We

provided by Figure 2 are following

believe that in the future in addition to commonly used
monitoring methods that combine multiple products it

Until March 2020 the frequency of access had

will be essential to use information that analyzes

been about 4 times/month and then increased toorganizational objectives and staff utilization informa-

15 times/month in April 2020

tion

(ａ)

(ｂ)

From September 2020

darker colors had

observed on Tuesdays (3rd cell from the left) and(Received February 28 2022 ; Revised March 28 2022)

Fridays (6th cell from the left) than on other daysof the week This trend continued until May 2021(ｃ)74

From June 2021 trend (b) disappeared
THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS

KANAI Akira
Akira Kanai got a Master of Media andGovernance Keio University in 2009 He joined
NTT Communications Corporation in the same
year He has been engaged in developing andoperating services related to IX and IP
network CISSP CISA CISM Professional
Engineer (Information Engineering)

HIROSE Masato
Masato Hirose completed his masterʼs degree
at School of Information Science and Technology Japan Advanced Institute of Science andTechnology (JAIST) in 2017 He joined NTT
Communications Corporation in the same year
Since then he has been engaged in researchand development of Internet technologies andservices㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇㍇Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 202075