First is on our frontend side. We have 2 nginx servers (using linux HA and vips) which send traffic out to the nodes of the cluster which are up, retrying to a different node in the case of failure or a slow reply.
Deeper in the system, there are 3 copies of every piece of data.
Both of these are fairly normal mechanisms; the 3-copy thing is used at Google and by Hadoop and friends.
Within the datastore, there are 3 copies of each piece of data. When a get() request is made, it goes out to the "closest" copy; if an answer isn't heard from by some threshold, a 2nd request is made to one of the other replicas. Whoever gets the data back first wins.
20 mbit/sec in the provincial city in Ukraine, a bit more in the capital.
Also, around 20 mbit/sec in the Bratislava, Slovakia.
Internet connection not an issue in those countries.
Connection in Ukraine is much better than in Malaysia, for example. Lag is lower (Ukraine is in Europe, obviously), speed in higher in average, price is lower. Speaking from personal experience.
In fact connection in Ukraine is much better than even in US. I have 60 mbs at home and pay 15$/month without any traffic limit (no throttling too). For $20 you can get 100mbs. In most major cities you have an access to several providers so you can choose what works better for you. The ping to SF is 200ms. Upload download speed to SF is 4mbs/6mbs. Upload is faster.
In the city where I live (Donetsk) public areas are covered with free wifi service.
