This is a photo of the 5 Gb/s dedicated optical fibre line (orange), across which the LHC data destined for the TRIUMF ATLAS-Canada tier1 computing centre is transferred. I believe the yellow line to be the failsafe 1 Gb/s line used in case of the primary connection’s failure.

The ATLAS detector collects enough data in one minute to fill about 27 CD-Roms, and is currently running with nearly no interruption (you can check to see if it is in ‘proton physics’ mode by going here). Think about the last time you moved a (legally acquired & DRM free, of course) movie file from your computer to a flash drive, and how long that took. Now think about successfully sending 27 of them per minute, from Geneva to Vancouver, through one line as big as a piece of spaghetti.