Contd. How Geedge Products Are Deployedd Day-to-Day Operation Geedge operates a managed service: throughout their contract with a client government, Geedge staff will provide tech support, largely remotely. While local technical staff at the national command-and-control center can perform some maintenance and configuration tasks, it is alarming how much of the work is being carried out by the Chinese company through their remote access. There is no evidence to suggest that Geedge maintains a permanent physical presence of technical staff inside their client countries.   In day-to-day operations, Cyber Narrator is the entry point for a non-technical analyst in a client government. This is the Geedge program that the average government employee will interact with to select and monitor targets. Other products, like TSG, would be operated by technical network administrators in the client state, or by Geedge employees remotely as part of their managed service. Network Zodiac is used to maintain the rest of the components in the system. In terms of hardware, Ether Fabric is the only bespoke product we know of that Geedge has designed specifically for use in its systems. Using Ether Fabric, however, is not mandatory as, in certain cases, Geedge has repurposed existing hardware, albeit with more configuration. System Modes for Censorship and Surveillance The Geedge system can be deployed in two primary modes, mirrored and in-line, to help to control the internet. In mirrored mode, sometimes referred to as “passive” in the documents, the data is mirrored to the Geedge appliance using a network tap. Specifically, the network tap is an optical bypass switch. The packets do not have to wait to be processed before continuing to their destination. In this mode, if there was a failure of the Geedge system, the internet would continue to function. This mode can be advantageous as it does not add network latency due to processing delays or congestion. In mirrored mode, clients are unable to stop specific traffic from passing through and have to rely on packet injection to block connections. In in-line mode, also referred to as “active” mode in the documents, the traffic must pass through the Geedge appliance before continuing to its destination. In this mode, a failure of the Geedge system would mean that the internet would stop working. This mode does add network latency due to processing and may incur additional delays during times of network congestion when the traffic exceeds the capacity of the Geedge system. The advantage of this mode is that one can fully stop specific traffic flows from ever making it through the network. This is often the solution chosen by customers who want absolute control, at the cost of reliability and network quality.