Chapter 84: The Day of Launch

At ten o’clock on the morning of September 23, 2001, the voice feature on the platform was officially opened. Long before that, at seven in the morning, Huang He was already inside the company’s server room, staring at the live backend data displayed on the enormous projection screen.

Unlike the first time he had seen it more than three months earlier, when more than half the room had stood empty, the server room was now packed solid with large server clusters. Every employee was at their station, tense and focused, ready to respond in real time to whatever might happen.

“Where’s Zhimeng?” Huang He looked around, but did not see her anywhere. He could not help finding it strange; she had clearly slept in the company the night before, so why was she not here at such an important moment?

“She seems to be by the power room,” Huang Zheng said.

“What’s she doing there?” Huang He muttered, and headed that way. Before he even reached the door, he heard Leng Zhimeng’s usually clear voice, now rough with strain, snapping, “Old Liu, I told you three days ago that the new power cabinet had to be installed before today. The server circuits must be isolated, separated from the lines for the other equipment. And make the cables thicker. Even our thickest lines aren’t enough; we need three run together. Why on earth haven’t you done it? If you’d handled it in time, would I need to be standing here watching you?”

“Boss, you’re really overthinking it,” the factory’s electrical manager, Old Liu, droned on. “It’s only a few machines. Our power cabinet was newly installed last year and can support the electricity needs of an entire workshop. It’s definitely enough to handle a few computers. There’s no need to install another cabinet or give it a separate power supply. That would waste time, and money too!”

If not for the fact that his workers were still busy at their tasks, Leng Zhimeng would have kicked him in the shins on the spot.

“Old Liu, stop nagging. Zhimeng is only thinking of the company’s best interests. Better safe than sorry!” Huang He said. Only then did Old Liu finally shut his mouth.

“Brother-in-law, your stubborn old employees are driving me crazy. And the layout of this plant is completely unsuited to the needs of a modern network center. Otherwise, could you find me a piece of land and let me build a new server room from scratch?”

“But it can’t be in a crowded urban area. It’d be best if it were out in the mountains, where the temperature is naturally lower and better for cooling. There’s already no room for any more air conditioners in that server room. I had no choice but to buy a central unit and devote it entirely to that one room. I’m just hoping it can hold the temperature down!”

“Oh, and the servers too. Compaq’s machines are decent enough in quality, but their after-sales service is absolutely terrible. My fifty-million-yuan server order has been sitting there for almost three days, and the installers still haven’t shown up… No, I really can’t wait any longer. Brother-in-law, I can’t stay here in the server room directing things with you. I need to take people to install and configure this batch of servers. If I had a second choice, I’d never buy damned Compaq servers again!” Leng Zhimeng complained without pause, leaving Huang He with a growing headache.

“Zhimeng, I think you really are worrying too much. We’ve prepared more than enough. We’ve already poured one hundred and fifty million yuan into hardware. I think that should be plenty.”

“Who knows? We originally estimated based on a peak of two million users on the first day, but what if traffic goes beyond that? Wouldn’t our server room be completely crippled?”

“Two million? How could that be…” Huang He shrugged. The platform’s previous peak had been fewer than four hundred thousand users. How could it suddenly jump to two million?

Besides, the original server setup had already been designed to handle two million users online at once. Now the total computing power and traffic capacity had increased by more than three times. That was surely more than enough.

Of course, Huang He also understood that with the launch of voice service, traffic could not be compared with the era of plain text alone. But no matter how he looked at it, estimating based on a ceiling of two million users was absolutely sufficient.

So Huang He forcibly brought Leng Zhimeng into the server room and would not let her keep working. They waited for ten o’clock to arrive.

At that same moment, in countless homes, many people were also opening the platform on their personal computers and waiting for ten o’clock. After all, using software to carry out voice communication was an unprecedented feat and experience across the entire domestic internet.

Moreover, internet users of that era were at their most curious. They were eager to experience what real online chatting actually felt like, and so they collectively waited for ten o’clock to strike.

Some might wonder: with such a major new feature, wouldn’t an update be necessary?

Of course an update was needed, but not a major one. From the very first line of code, Huang He had already required the framework for voice chat to be embedded in the program, and development of the voice feature itself had begun at the same time.

So the platform had not produced its voice function after only a little more than a week of work; it had taken a full three months to complete. And precisely because of that, much of the voice code and related functionality had already been quietly folded into each new version through the platform’s regular updates.

This time there was no need for a large-scale update. A simple hot patch would activate the voice feature that had long been sealed inside the client.

And it was not only personal computers. The grassroots promotion team that had just been assembled launched a full-scale campaign to every internet cafe, reminding the owners to update the latest version of the platform on their machines.

The owners all knew the platform had stirred up a major sensation and cooperated readily, so most internet cafes completed the update. If not, it did not matter; players could simply update manually when they opened the software.

The cafe owners soon discovered that updating in advance had been a wise move, because their customer traffic had increased noticeably compared with an ordinary day. Almost all of those extra people had come specifically for the platform. Most had no computer at home; the rest knew perfectly well how poor their own internet connections were and preferred to use the internet cafe’s high-speed broadband instead.

At last, under the gaze of eager anticipation from all, the clock reached ten.

“Open the voice channel!” Huang He gave the order without hesitation. Instantly, every user saw that the voice icon, which had until then remained gray and disabled, lit up at once and became usable.

And naturally, they immediately sent voice invitations to friends.

10:00:05 — “Four hundred thousand!” an employee shouted. Within five seconds, the user count for the voice feature had reached four hundred thousand.

10:01:25 — “Six hundred thousand!” Eighty seconds later, the number climbed to six hundred thousand.

10:05:02 — “One million and counting!” In just five minutes, the number of people using voice had broken past one million. The entire data curve shot upward like a straight line, frightening everyone who saw it.

Such explosive growth showed that the users who had already tried voice found it so comfortable that they were unwilling to stop, while new users kept joining in ever greater numbers, producing this terrifying surge.

10:48:56 — “Two million! We’ve reached two million simultaneous users!!” Suddenly, a roar of cheers erupted in the backend room, because the platform’s concurrent online users had, for the first time in history, broken through the two-million mark. Before this, only one other major service had ever claimed such a figure; now this platform had achieved it too.

Of course, it was only temporary. The surge had been driven by the launch of voice, the promotion of programs like those on television, and the curiosity surrounding online friendship. Under such perfect conditions, the platform had managed, in less than four months since its birth, to achieve the astonishing feat of two million users online at once.

But that figure seemed to be only temporary, because the number of simultaneous users was still rising. They might yet break the record again.