After dinner, Zhou Xueyin posted Daming Glasses' summer promotion on the forum. Although it was during the internet peak hours, the speed of uploading images was not affected at all, and soon a promotional post was completed.
"Hey, Yinyin, don't you think this virtual host is a bit odd?" Kang Siyin stuck half her head out from behind the screen, looking at the bored Zhou Xueyin.
"How is it odd?" Zhou Xueyin looked at her, puzzled.
"Just look, other webpages, during this time, are either 502 or 401... but our forum opens up super fast, as if it isn't affected by bandwidth at all." Kang Siyin frantically pressed F5, and the forum responded very quickly, refreshing the page every time she clicked.
"Maybe their server is just really good? Not limited by bandwidth..." Zhou Xueyin didn't think much about it, feeling that the 5000 yuan spent was well worth it.
"Isn't it good that it opens quickly? Won't it be more convenient to interact with netizens in the future?" Jixiang also didn't think it was anything bad.
"Wait a sec... Let me test something..." Kang Siyin, still not convinced and drawing on her years of roaming the internet, always felt something was off.
Kang Siyin cleared the browsing cache and opened the forum again.
"Hmm... I knew it! Yinyin, come here!" Kang Siyin called Zhou Xueyin to her seat, "Look, now our forum opens just like any other site..."
The progress bar sped up and slowed down intermittently, and the page was blank, seemingly loading the forum slowly.
First, oversized black text appeared on the screen, then slowly shrank. When the loading bar finished, the forum's text and images separately appeared before their eyes.
"What did you do? Why is our forum like this?" Zhou Xueyin was somewhat panicked, "Try refreshing it again!"
Kang Siyin was really startled. She had just cleared the cache, and not only was the forum opening slowly, but after everything loaded, the style was gone?
If other users saw the forum like this, it would be a huge embarrassment.
She was pleased when it looked good on her end, but others saw a mess, who knows what they might say about the admin...
Kang Siyin refreshed it a few more times, and with each refresh, the forum loaded faster, until finally, it appeared completely intact on the page, neatly styled with uniform fonts.
"Phew..." Both of them were scared. The forum had just gone live and if it had erred, that would have been a big problem, especially since they had added friendly links—it would have been a joke.
"I know what's going on now, this virtual host provider is quite sly!" Kang Siyin said thoughtfully.
"What do you mean, sly?" Zhou Xueyin was still confused, not quite understanding what was going on.
"Yinyin... You really learned nothing in four years of college! Don't you understand such simple logic?" Kang Siyin looked at Zhou Xueyin's confused face and shook her head in resignation, "The ISP, to reduce bandwidth requests during peak times, directly tapped into the user's local cache, so it opened super fast."
"Oh! Now that you mention it, I understand!" Zhou Xueyin smacked one hand with the other, "So when I refresh the page, it feels like it's downloading data from the server, but it's actually pulling data from the local machine, only retrieving the latest data from the server, with the bulk of it on the local machine, right?"
"Exactly! But it's also a kind of protection mechanism for their servers... If I were the ISP, I'd choose to do the same... It's just that new content might not load as quickly..." Kang Siyin shrugged.
"So is this good or bad?" Zhou Xueyin frowned, tilting her head as she looked at Kang Siyin.
"Can't say it's good or bad... It works... As long as it can quickly refresh the new content, it's fine..." Kang Siyin felt that for a virtual host that cost 5000 yuan and was bought for six additional months, she couldn't ask for too much.
The clock hit 11:30 PM, the local area broadband's peak use time ended... Opening any webpage was now completely smooth.
Kang Siyin immediately opened the forum backup tool and clicked on data download.
Initially the speed was normal, but it started slowing down more and more until after 10 minutes, it had only progressed 0.1%.
Though slow, it was still downloading; just when it was about to reach the final 1%, the download stopped.
Once it stopped, it was half an hour of nothing. During this half hour, Kang Siyin dared not touch anything, fearing a slight movement might crash the program, forcing them to start all over again.
Not only did she dare not move, but the other three also refrained from using the internet, worried that browsing might affect the backup of the forum data.
"KK, how much longer..." Zhou Xueyin asked concernedly.
"It's the last 1% but it just won't move..." Kang Siyin said anxiously.
"Let me take a look..." Zhou Xueyin got up, wanting to look at Kang Siyin's computer screen.
"Damn! An error occurred!" Kang Siyin cursed angrily.
"Eh? I just stood up…" Zhou Xueyin said timidly.
Kang Siyin rarely got angry; although she always appeared expressionless as if she was angry, in reality, she had a calm demeanor, unaffected by criticism or praise.
If you ever heard her cursing, then she was truly angered.
"Uh... it's not your fault. It's the same error message as before, a data error from the server." Kang Siyin reverted to her usual demeanor.
"Uh... how many times have you tried? Maybe I should call the service provider for you!" Zhou Xueyin grabbed her phone, ready to make a call.
"What time is it now, let's call them tomorrow..." Kang Siyin pointed at the clock hanging on the wall.
"Oh, right, it's past midnight... I'll call them first thing when we wake up!" Zhou Xueyin smiled apologetically.
Li Jiniang and Yao Shanshan had been unable to join into the conversation between Zhou Xueyin and Kang Siyin and had gone to bed early to chat.
"Jixiang, do you think our team stands a chance in this competition?" Yao Shanshan asked Li Jiniang with no confidence.
"What's the matter now? Hasn't your team always been well coordinated?" Li Jiniang, having seen their rehearsals a few times, didn't think there was a major issue.
"Isn't it because Mi Lu suddenly joined…" Yao Shanshan hesitated.
"So what if she joined... She's not taking your role, is she?" Li Jiniang, seeing Yao Shanshan's demeanor, suddenly realized something, turned over, and looked at her.
"Well…" Yao Shanshan nodded dejectedly, choosing not to continue.
"Damn! Why the hell not! With her big horse face, she deserves Yuna?" Zhou Xueyin, just entering the bedroom, happened to hear this and burst out cursing.
"But, she dances better than me…" Yao Shanshan said, even less confidently.
"What's Guo Zi's attitude? He's the team leader, he should be assigning roles!" Zhou Xueyin continued asking for details.
"He said, let us solve it privately…" Yao Shanshan whispered.