dognovel Chapter 81 Entangled Internet Cables
Chapter 81 Entangled Internet Cables
The next morning.
The California sunshine was still outrageously good. The red Cadillac convertible drove south along Highway 101 and entered an unremarkable residential area in Mountain View.
There are no manicured lawns like those in Beverly Hills, nor towering iron gates that keep people at arm's length. There are only rows of bungalows built in the 1950s and 60s, with peeling paint on the exterior walls, and dusty station wagons or pickup trucks parked in front of each house.
The car stopped in front of a beige bungalow.
The address is: 2400 Charleston Road.
"Is this the place?"
Amy held the note with the address written on it in her hand and checked the house number three times.
"Saionji-kun, have we come to the wrong place? This looks... like an ordinary house."
Moreover, it was the kind of house that wasn't well-maintained. The grass in the yard was overgrown and no one had trimmed it, and the mailbox by the door was stuffed with uncollected newspapers and dating slips.
"That's right."
Satsuki pushed open the car door and stepped out in her seven-centimeter heels. Today, she was wearing a white sleeveless dress and a wide-brimmed hat, looking as if she had just stepped off the cover of Vogue magazine.
"Geniuses usually don't have time to mow the lawn."
Satsuki walked to the door and, without even ringing the doorbell, simply raised her hand and knocked on the wooden door that didn't look very sturdy.
"Thump, thump, thump."
No one answered.
But through the door, you could hear a loud argument coming from inside.
The sounds of men roaring, women screaming, and something shattering on the ground.
"Get out! Tell those Sequoia Capital bloodsuckers! If they try to sell my company, I'll smash all the servers!"
It was a woman's voice, hysterical and full of anger.
Amy shrank back in fright, hiding behind Satsuki: "Should we... come another day? They seem to be fighting."
"Now is the perfect time."
Satsuki's lips curled up slightly.
"This is what startups taste like. Anxiety, anger, and cash flow that's about to run out."
She gestured to Fujita Tsuyoshi behind her.
Fujita took a step forward, but this time he didn't knock. Instead, he grabbed the doorknob and pushed it hard.
"Click".
The door wasn't locked.
Or perhaps the owner of the house simply didn't bother locking the door.
The door opened.
A strange smell wafted over.
It smelled like a mixture of stale coffee grounds, the ozone emanating from hot electronic components, the sour smell of clothes that hadn't been washed for days, and... a strong odor of cat urine.
"Cough cough..."
Amy covered her nose, almost knocked over by the smell.
She looked down at her expensive Chanel suit, then at the floor of the room—covered in a layer of something that looked like either dust or cat hair, making it impossible for her to find a place to step.
"Who the hell are you?!"
In the center of the living room, a woman with short blond hair and wearing an oversized T-shirt suddenly turned around. She was holding something that looked like a circuit board, seemingly about to smash it against the wall.
Sandy Lerner.
Opposite her, on the sofa sat a man with a stubble beard and sunken eyes, holding his head and looking pained.
Ryan Bosak.
The two men were stunned when they saw the group of uninvited guests at the door.
This scene is too bizarre.
In this chaotic room filled with trash, cables, and cat hair, two delicate Asian girls, as exquisite as porcelain dolls, suddenly burst in, followed by several burly bodyguards who looked like they stepped out of The Matrix.
"If you're a salesman, get out!" Sandy roared. "If you're a lawyer sent by Sequoia Capital, get out too!"
"We are lost tourists."
Satsuki wasn't intimidated by the other person's imposing manner and smiled slightly. She took out a handkerchief from her bag, elegantly covered her mouth and nose, and glanced around the room.
"I heard there's a very special... 'cat' here?"
"A cat?" Sandy was taken aback. "You want to adopt a cat?"
Before she could react, Amy, who had been hiding behind Satsuki, suddenly called out.
"Be careful!"
Amy pointed to the ground.
Right at Satsuki's feet, a tangled mess of dark cables coiled like a snake. These weren't ordinary power cords, but rather a jumble of various network cables and data cables, stretching from the living room all the way into the bedroom. Some of the cables even had their insulation worn through, exposing the copper wires inside.
"Sizzle—"
An unhealthy electrical hum came from the server rack next to it.
"That's our core asset! Don't step on it!" Bosak, the man who had been holding his head, suddenly jumped up and shouted.
Satsuki stopped and looked down at the tangled mess.
"This is the $100 million line?"
She said something in a low voice in Japanese, then looked up at the couple.
"I am Saionji. I'm from Tokyo."
"I'm not here to buy a cat, nor am I here to start a fight."
Satsuki gestured to Fujita to take out a business card and hand it over.
"I'm here to deliver 'ammunition' to you."
"Ammunition?" Sandy took the business card, looking at the little girl suspiciously. "What ammunition? Japanese yen?"
"Enough ammunition to drive out all those bloodsuckers who want to sell your company."
Satsuki's words changed Sandy's expression.
But Bosak clearly had no interest in listening to this business nonsense. He scratched his head impatiently, sat back down in front of the messy servers, and his fingers flew across the keyboard.
"Whoever you are, don't touch that cable! Damn it, that data packet is lost again! What's wrong with the gateway at Stanford?!"
He was completely immersed in his own world.
Amy stood at the doorway, somewhat at a loss. The environment here made her extremely uncomfortable; the chaos and filth were a nightmare for someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But that voice...
"Buzz—Buzz—Buzz—"
The sound of dozens of typhoon fans running at high speed simultaneously. The subtle clicking sound of a hard drive reading and writing. The whistling sound of countless electronic signals flowing through copper wires.
It filled the entire room.
For ordinary people, this is nothing short of noise.
But for Amy, it was a summons from the god of machines (laughs).
Her gaze passed over the arguing couple, over the trash scattered on the ground, and settled on a corner.
There was a machine there without a case cover.
It looked ugly, like a Frankenstein monster forcibly pieced together. Wires of various colors were exposed, and several green circuit boards were plugged into crude slots, their indicator lights flashing wildly.
Red, green, yellow.
The frequency of the flashing seemed to have no pattern, yet it also seemed to contain some kind of complex logic.
Amy started walking without even realizing it.
"Amy?" Satsuki called out to her.
Amy didn't hear it.
As if bewitched, she avoided the pizza boxes and empty Coke cans on the ground and walked step by step toward that corner.
Fujita tried to stop her, but Satsuki waved her hand, signaling Fujita not to interfere.
Her high heels stepped on the internet cable on the ground, and she stumbled, almost falling.
"Hey! Little girl! Get away from that!" Bosak yelled without turning around. "That's a prototype! It's hot!"
Amy didn't stop.
She walked up to the machine.
That was a multiprotocol router. Or rather, its ancestor.
Amy stared at the densely packed circuit boards.
She couldn't understand most of the chips on it; it was the latest American technology. But she understood the structure.
On the left is the interface for connecting to the local area network (LAN), and on the right is the interface for connecting to the wide area network (WAN). The processor in the middle is like a tireless translator, translating one language into another.
"TCP/IP..."
Amy crouched down.
Her expensive Chanel dress trailed on the dusty ground, stained with black dirt. But she didn't care at all.
She reached out, her fingertips hovering above a hot chip, feeling its temperature.
"here……"
Amy suddenly spoke. Her English was broken, her grammar was off, and she just sputtered words.
"Here... is it a bottleneck?"
She pointed to a data bus interface on the circuit board.
The Bosak player, who was typing on the keyboard, stopped.
He turned his head and looked at the Japanese girl who had gotten herself all dirty with some surprise.
"What did you say?"
"Data flow..." Amy struggled to organize her thoughts, imagining the electrical currents as flowing water in her mind. "Too fast here, but slow there."
She made a "traffic jam" gesture with her hand.
"Buffer...too small?"
Bosak was stunned.
He suddenly stood up, rushed to Amy's side, ignored the mess on the ground, knelt down, and looked closely at the spot Amy was pointing to.
That is the data exchange channel between the memory controller chip and the main processor.
"Damn it..."
Bosak muttered to himself.
"You can tell? You can tell just by looking?"
This was a problem that had been bothering him for a week. Data packets were constantly being lost during high-volume concurrency. He had checked the code countless times, but had overlooked the physical bottleneck in the hardware.
"Heat".
Amy pointed to the chip.
"Very hot here. Logic stuck."
She looked up, and in her eyes, hidden behind her glasses, shone a light that only her kind could understand.
"Need...bypass?"
She took a pen out of her bag and drew a simple circuit diagram on a scrap of paper.
Although it was just a sketch, and although it was drawn very hastily.
But Bosak understood.
It was a shunt capacitor design, extremely simple, yet extremely ingenious.
"Holy shit..."
Bosak grabbed the paper, his eyes wide as saucers.
"Sandy! Look at this! This child... she's speaking the language of hardware!"
Sandy Lerner also came over. Her hostility faded as she looked at the girl crouching on the ground, her skirt stained, yet still focused on the circuit board.
Instead, there was a sense of surprise, and even a hint of... warmth.
This is "one of our own".
He's not the kind of investor who wears a suit and only looks at financial statements. He's a tech geek who understands technology, machines, and can even hear the pulse of electronics.
"Is she your engineer?" Sandy turned to ask Satsuki.
Satsuki stood not far away, maintaining absolute elegance even in this garbage-filled room.
She looked at Amy squatting on the ground, a satisfied smile playing on her lips.
This is the effect she wanted.
In Silicon Valley, where technology reigns supreme, sometimes no amount of money is as effective as the discerning eye of a knowledgeable person.
"More or less."
Satsuki smiled and shook her head.
"You can think that way."
Satsuki walked over, not bothered by the mess on the ground, but reached out and gently patted Amy's shoulder.
"So, Amy? Isn't this box interesting?"
"interesting!"
Amy looked up, her face flushed with excitement, her eyes sparkling.
"Saionji-kun, this design is ingenious! They've written the software protocol into the hardware! It's like... like putting a universal translator in a computer!"
"Although the current workmanship is very rough and the circuit design has a lot of redundancy, the idea..."
Amy was so excited that she was almost incoherent.
"This idea is brilliant! It could allow all the computers to connect and communicate!"
Bosak listened to Amy's evaluation, and his face lit up with the ecstatic joy of finding a kindred spirit. He even wanted to reach out and hold Amy's hand, but seeing the grease on his own hands, he withdrew.
"That's right! It's the all-purpose translator!"
Bosak shouted excitedly.
"Those damn investors have no idea! All they know is how to sell boxes! They have no idea this thing can change the world!"
He looked at Satsuki with a newfound respect in his eyes.
"Your 'eyes' are amazing."
"Since you're so capable, can we sit down and talk?"
Satsuki pointed to the sofa piled high with pizza boxes.
"The question is how to keep this world-changing box alive."
Sandy Lerner took a deep breath.
She put down the circuit board in her hand, kicked aside an empty can at her feet, and cleared a place to sit.
"Please sit down."
Sandy looked at Satsuki, his tone still firm, but it no longer had that hostile, volatile quality.
"If you really have the 'ammunition' and also understand the technology..."
"Then I don't mind listening to what you rich kids from Tokyo are up to."
Satsuki sat down gracefully, her back still ramrod straight even on a sofa covered in cat hair.
Amy, meanwhile, remained squatting beside the machine, studying the overheating chip with Bosak, their heads close together.
In this chaotic garage, at the very origin where an internet giant was about to be born.
Two parallel lines finally intersected.
One is money, the other is technology.
And what tangled them together was the Japanese girl squatting on the ground, her skirt covered in dust.
......
The following is relevant information:
1. Multiprotocol router
Context: The strange thing that Amy found in the corner, which connects different networks, is called the "all-purpose translator".
Specifically, a router is a hardware device operating at Layer 3 (Network Layer) of the OSI model, responsible for forwarding data packets between computer networks. In the late 1980s, the network environment was extremely complex, with various incompatible proprietary protocols (such as AppleTalk, DECnet, IPX, etc.). Cisco's early core technological advantage lay in its "multi-protocol" support, which enabled computer networks using different communication languages to interconnect, forming the physical foundation of the Internet.
2. Gateway
Context: Bosak complained, "What's wrong with the gateway at Stanford?"
Specifically, a gateway is a network node that connects two networks using different communication protocols, data formats, or languages. It acts as the network's "gateway," responsible for repackaging or converting data packets from one protocol to another to facilitate data transmission between heterogeneous networks. In early networks, gateways were often critical nodes causing data transmission failures (packet loss).
3. LAN (Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network)
Context: When Amy was observing the circuit board, she pointed out that "the left side is the interface for connecting to the local area network (LAN), and the right side is the interface for connecting to the wide area network (WAN)."
Specific meaning:
LAN: A computer network with a smaller coverage area, typically limited to homes, offices, or building complexes. It features high data transfer rates and low latency.
WAN: A telecommunications network covering a wide geographical area, used to connect different regional networks. The Internet itself is the world's largest wide area network. One of the main functions of a router is to enable interconnection between LANs and WANs.
4. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
Context: The terminology Amy recited while crouching in front of the machine identified as "writing the software protocol into the hardware."
In essence, this is the foundational communication architecture of the Internet. IP is responsible for assigning addresses to devices and performing routing; TCP is responsible for establishing a reliable connection between the sender and receiver, ensuring that data packets are transmitted in order and without errors. By 1988, TCP/IP was gradually surpassing other proprietary protocols to become the universal standard for global networks.
5. Data packet
Context: Bosak complained that "data packets are always being lost during high-volume concurrency".
Specifically, a data packet is the smallest unit of data transmitted in a packet-switched network. When information (such as emails or files) is transmitted over a network, it is divided into several small data blocks (packets), each containing a source address, a destination address, and some data content. If the network is congested or the hardware processing capacity is insufficient, data packets will be dropped, a phenomenon known as "packet loss."
6. Data Flow
Context: When Amy was analyzing the circuit board, she pointed out, "Data flow... Too fast here."
Specifically, it refers to the path and rate at which data is transmitted between components of a computer system (such as from memory to the processor, or from a port to the bus). The smoothness of the data flow directly determines the system's throughput.
7. Buffer
In the context of the text, Amy points out that Bosack's machine has a "buffer too small," causing data congestion.
Specifically, a buffer is a reserved area in physical memory (RAM) used to temporarily store data being transferred from one device to another. In routers, when the inbound data rate exceeds the outbound processing rate (e.g., a high-speed data influx into the local area network while the WAN egress bandwidth is insufficient or the processor is overloaded), data is temporarily stored in the buffer. If the buffer capacity is too small (overflow), newly arriving packets will be dropped directly, causing network latency or connection interruption.
8. Bottleneck
Context: Amy points out that there is a "bottleneck" between the memory controller chip and the main processor.
Specifically, it refers to the critical component in a system that limits overall performance. In hardware circuitry, it typically refers to the part with the lowest bandwidth, slowest processing speed, or worst thermal stability. The text mentions overheating in the data exchange channel, indicating that the physical design at that point cannot handle the current data throughput, thus limiting system performance.
9. Shunt capacitor/bypass capacitor
In the context of the text: Amy suggested adding "Need... bypass?" to the heat-generating chip.
Specifically, in high-speed digital circuits, the switching state of a chip generates high-frequency noise, causing voltage fluctuations and potentially leading to logic errors or overheating. Bypass capacitors are placed near the chip's power supply pins to filter out high-frequency noise, provide a low-impedance current loop, and stabilize the power supply voltage. Amy's proposed solution addresses the data processing logic stuttering caused by physical thermal effects through hardware circuit modifications.
The following chapters will contain a lot of specialized knowledge, so I plan to list relevant terms that may need explanation at the end of each chapter, like this. I wonder if you all like this format for popular science? If you think it's acceptable, I'll add these annotations in later chapters; if you think it detracts from the reading experience, I won't.
What do you all think? Please reply here.