ATLANTA -- There are concerns today that a massive swine flu outbreak could cause the Internet to get sick too.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has issued a warning that as the H1N1 virus forces more and more people to stay home from work and school, those people could be logging on from home and overwhelm Internet providers' network capabilities.

GAO wrote in a report, "Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic".

The Washington Post is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security is in charge of the communications network during a national emergency, but that plan doesn't include dealing with an Internet network overload.

The GAO report went on to say, "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".