Mysteries of Telegram Data Centers: A Deep Dive into Hidden Infrastructure
I explored the enigmatic world of Telegram's data centers, uncovering how their global network operates behind the scenes. Despite strict privacy claims, the infrastructure reveals surprising vulnerabilities and operational quirks. This journey highlights the balance between security, scalability, and the challenges of maintaining a decentralized communication platform.
The true power of Telegram lies not in its features, but in the invisible architecture that keeps it running against all odds.
- vvpan
Somebody already posted it but I wanted to mention it again, investigations that Telegram has not been able to dispute have revealed that Telegram's infrastructure is managed by a person who is also managing infra for FSB. And this is happening unbeknownst to Telegram employees.
- bflesch
Beautiful analysis. It really looks like the country distribution [1] follows the geographical split between five eyes intelligence services, and maybe a small slice for France after they imprisoned the Telegram CEO [2] in order to take over data ownership from russia.
[1] https://dev.moe/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-14.png
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...
- flexagoon
Just like DC5 is often down to the discontent of Chinese users, DC2 is the one serving all Russian and Ukrainian users, so in the more technical Russian-speaking communities "dc2 down" is also a pretty common saying
- glaslong
The DC3 gap is interesting. I wonder whether they deprecated it because the other EU server had plenty of capacity, or still keep it but only for... "special" account data flow.
Also, it looks like it's easy enough to ID your DC on their API, though I haven't tried it yet (more of a Matrix Stan personally):
- dgroshev
More mysteries of Telegram Data Centres: https://istories.media/en/stories/2025/06/10/telegram-fsb/
(and a follow-up: https://istories.media/en/news/2025/06/10/telegram-responds-... )
- SpaceL10n
For a hot second there I was really excited to learn about historical telegram "data centers".
It's a capital T.
- londons_explore
This strikes me as a huge amount of custom code and technical debt. Every new software dev probably has to learn this.
Why not a sticky master election per user, and have no special data centers?
- AntronX
DC in Miami, explains why Telegram app is snappy fast for me. I notice similar speed improvement with Meta and other big tech apps when I'm on the west coast. I guess latency matters when your app is making tons of requests.