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Ask HN: NSA and their Internet connection

1 points by dirktheman ↗ HN
While I'm infuriated by the breach of privacy, the hacker in me can't help but being intrigued. 'Collecting' and storing these quantities of data requires a massive operation, and I'm left with a lot of questions.

One of them is this: how do they capture all this data and transfer it to Utah? The fastest internet connection in the world (Tokyo, I believe) is 2 Gbps, which doesn't seem nearly enough for transfering the data. And that's Tokyo, not rural Utah! Do they have dedicated fiberglass cables? Originating from where?

1 comment

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bifrost
The "fastest" single pipe in the world right now is actually 100Gbps, so you're a little behind the times.

In terms of "how do they do that", its probably just store and forward pre-parsed data...