With Hoffmann's promise, Hollande wasn't worried. Zhou Shuo's statement, he just regarded it as a kind of intimidation. The customer is God, and this kind of thing will always only appear in a perfectly competitive market. Unfortunately, neither the telephone line nor the Internet is a perfect competition. Even in Seattle, it's not an exaggeration to say that the SBC is covering the sky with one hand.

"You'd better think clearly, if we didn't have Berkeley's operation, there would be absolutely no other company that could do 10G fiber optic lines." Hollande said subtly.

"Don't worry, we'll see each other soon." Zhou Shuo looked at him meaningfully. The SBC is certainly a behemoth, but Hoffman does not absolutely represent it.

"I hope you'll figure it out sooner." Hollande shook his head, turned and left. Since the price cannot be negotiated, and the SBC will not recognize other companies to do this business, it will have to wait.

Anyway, Berkeley didn't expect this project to survive, and time was on their side after all. On the contrary, in Hollande's view, Zhou Shuo's can't afford to drag it out. It's the rooms on this floor of the Courtyard by Marriott, which cost thousands of dollars a day, and this pure cost will only increase with time.

Yet, almost at the same time, the largest webcom forum in the United States has been turned upside down. The webcom forum is a collection of forums similar to the West Continent, it has 65 sub-sites, more than 6,000 IP visits, and more than 4,000 posts per day. At least in 1995, many future celebrities were his users.

In this way, a post suddenly appears at the top of all sub-forums. The number of clicks on this post, which was pinned to the top by forum managers, suddenly jumped up like a rocket.

"President Orff. You'd better check this out. Orff, the CEO of Compuserve, was woken up by the sound of a tinkling phone, and he picked up the microphone with his eyes closed. I heard the voice of the vice president on duty from inside.

"Well, preferably useful news." Orff muttered. Sit up from the bed.

Compuserve was the second-largest Internet access provider in the United States in 1995, although they were the first commercial company to offer Internet access. But with AOL catching up, it soon fell to second place. This is extremely intolerable for Orff, the conceited pioneer of Internet business.

He got out of bed sleepily and jotted down the web address dictated by the vice president on duty on the phone. I turned on my computer, connected to the Internet, ran my browser, and typed in the URL of the webcom website.

Almost instantly, his sleepiness was completely gone.

At the very top of the forum. The red-hot headline quickly caught his attention. A compression algorithm that doubles the current internet speed? God bless America! Is this the gospel of angels?

He clicked on the link with some trembling and it took him several minutes to open the post. This abnormal opening speed, which shows the server of the webcom site, is definitely experiencing severe overload right now.

But whatever, posts involving internet speed always touch everyone's hearts. Orff doesn't have the leisure to worry about webcom.

This article is written in a bit of a professional way, and if you are not a software or math professional, it will seem difficult. English is different from Chinese, and Chinese can also be guessed to approximate a meaning. And if English is quite "professional". I didn't even have to guess.

If you don't look at professional dictionaries, Americans are almost blind.

But fortunately, Orff is certainly not in the "unprofessional" crowd. He was even in the reply below the post. I saw a couple of familiar IDs.

He carefully read the main post, the post was not long, but he still read it for a long time. Thinking about an academic problem in such a serious way. It was something he hadn't experienced in a long time.

His wife got out of bed, apparently accustomed to his timeless pace of work. Kiss him. Asked, "Honey, do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?" ”

"Nope. I don't think I have time for coffee. He refused, "Look for the company's contact form in my drawer—"

Orff got dressed, stood up and said, "Help me call the CTO and CIO of the company, I want them to meet at the company now." ”

"Okay, do you want me to call the driver?" One of them brought him leather shoes, worried about whether he was in good shape for driving.

"It's too late, I have to go to the company immediately."

Orff walked as he spoke, and before he even had time to call, the man had already pushed open the door and walked out.

In Compuserve's office building, the lights that had been extinguished were lit again. Car after car parked in the parking lot in front of it, and executives in suits and leather shoes ran desperately regardless of their demeanor.

"Orff, you saw that post too!" Compuserve's CTO, also known as Director of Technology, is a beautiful lady. Although lack of sleep is the natural enemy of beauty, she can't care about complaining at this time. The Internet is still an emerging industry, and any lead is not safe. Every technological revolution represents the expansion of the market, and it will also mean the reshuffling of the market.

Whether Compuserve eats meat or soup depends on whether it can seize this opportunity.

"That's what I saw, and that's why I called this meeting." Orff nodded and said, "Beverson, can you implement the compression algorithm described in that post?" ”

"No problem, I've already gathered a team from the Technical Department. It's impossible to come up with a finished product right away, but it's quick to test the algorithm. Beverson nodded and said urgently.

"That's good." Orff turned his head to CIO Stewart, who is short for Chief Information Officer and was in charge of intelligence for the entire company: "Stewart, we can't wait for the results of the experiment to come in, you need to start gathering intelligence on this information now." Who is its inventor? How to find him? Have you applied for a patent? In short, I have to know everything about this technique. ”

"Okay, I will immediately organize people to investigate, and I believe there will be results soon." Stewart grabbed the phone in his hand, flipped through his laptop and began dialing one by one.

Such a scene appeared almost simultaneously at AOL and Prodigy. These two companies, along with Compuserve, are currently among the top three Internet access providers in the U.S., and they account for 80 percent of the ISP provider market.

Although the three companies are located in different cities and even different time zones, the tension that has risen suddenly is no different.

For all three companies, it's almost a race against the clock. Everyone knows that those who run behind others will be outcasts in the market. Even if it is a strong player like AOL who occupies a leading position in the industry, one will become the dust of history if he is not careful.

Time passed in a hurry, and the hour hand had already deviated from the position of 12 o'clock. Before everyone knew it, the calendar had turned a page.

"The preliminary test results are out!" Bewason shouted excitedly, grabbed her laptop, and broke into Orff's office.

Orff, whose eyes were red, rubbed his face with his hands, walked over quickly and asked, "How is it, can the compression effect meet the design requirements?" ”

Beverson nodded excitedly: "It can reach 95% of the design level, because this compression technology does not use a fixed compression table, and when transmitting data, it also transmits the compression table generated by the algorithm in real time, so the transmission speed is poor." A 28.9Kbps modem can be estimated to reach a transfer speed of 56K after using this compression algorithm! ”

"Enough!" Orff exhaled deeply and said, "This will completely change the current Internet speed, and the spring of the Internet is coming soon." ”

"My only concern is whether Compuserve will survive this pre-dawn night and survive until the next spring......"

"President Orff, I'm afraid this dark day won't be too easy, there is news for the patent inquiry." Stewart also pushed open the door and walked in, pushed a piece of paper in front of Orff, and said: "This compression algorithm has not only applied for software patents, but also physical patents for integrated circuits. Chinese of Zhou. ”

"Chinese?" Orff was stunned for a moment, although he was also very curious about how China could have such a technique, but now was not the time to get to the bottom of it. He cleaned up his surprise and asked, "So, the post on the webcom forum is also this one. Weekly? ”

Stewart placed the remaining thick stack of papers on his desk, shook his head, and said, "No, this ID belongs to a mid-level project leader at Microsoft, and his name is James." The ERP system he is responsible for is from this master. Zhou's hands. ”

"What James's role in this is, we don't know. I checked their business scope, and it obviously has nothing to do with the technology of compression algorithms. ”

"Well, no matter how he got this article. Book your plane tickets now, we're going to Seattle. Orff picked up the piece of paper with the patent information on it and looked at it carefully.

"If it goes well, here is the hope for our Compuserve company to rise again!" (To be continued......)