After rebirth, I became a great master

Chapter 290 Model Project
The university is already on winter break.

Zhou Haoran came to school alone to take the make-up exam. The exam process was very serious, and no one was allowed to write on his behalf. He had to write clearly on each of the dozens of exam papers.

Most people simply cannot handle this level of intensity.

Fortunately, he is no ordinary person.

I finished copying it in one morning.

In the afternoon, Zhou Haoran and Dean Cheng went to attend a technical meeting for the national team project.

Zhou Haoran always kept a low profile at these kinds of meetings.

Not much talk.

However, the expert group discussed the same problem several times in a row, and proposed several versions of the plan, only to overturn them one after another, and it just wouldn't pass.

Zhou Haoran couldn't help but offer his suggestion: "We can use an internet interaction protocol."

This drew unanimous rebuttal from the expert panel.

Even Dean Cheng criticized him, telling him to listen more, observe more, and learn more, and not to follow trends.

This annoyed Zhou Haoran.

It’s so frustrating!

Even though he was the only one in the room who understood it, it was as if he was the villain!

The technical problem we encountered was actually quite simple: the accuracy of information exchange.

For example, user A wants to transfer 500 yuan to user B.

This process requires three parts.

First, 500 yuan was deducted from User A's account;
Second, transfer information is transmitted to a third-party account for monitoring and backup purposes.

Third, account B received an additional 500 yuan.

The process of transmitting this information is very important.

If the message is misinformed, it can easily cause chaos in the financial system.

For example, if 500 yuan is deducted from account A but not added to account B, the 500 yuan disappears into thin air; or if 500 yuan is added to account B but not deducted from account A.
For example, if account A is charged 500 yuan and account B is charged 500 yuan, it seems like everything is fine... but the third-party escrow account did not clearly record the transfer of 500 yuan.

If information is not transmitted accurately, the financial system can easily collapse.

This caused huge losses.

To ensure absolute safety, the core steps of current financial transfers still require human intervention, including making phone calls to verify information.

This greatly reduces efficiency.

The current hardware equipment is quite outdated, which increases the difficulty of verifying and changing information.

Cross-bank transfers, that's one thing.

Different banks have different systems and databases, making it difficult to connect them.

In reality, transfers within a single bank still involve connections between different databases.

Because there are too many people in China!

An IBM mainframe worth $3000 million can only manage a maximum of 2000 million accounts per machine, while major domestic banks have hundreds of millions of users.

This inherently limits a single bank at the hardware level, making it impossible to operate as a unified entity nationwide.

Management should be carried out by dividing the area into zones.

Some populous provinces need to set up several centers, mainframes, and databases within the province for management.

This results in "walls" separating even banks within the same city, and complex information exchange processes.

Because of the slow transfer efficiency, a large amount of money in China has not been used properly and has become "funds in transit", which is equivalent to "frozen funds".

From a macro perspective, this has created a constraint on the vigorous development of the social economy!

For Zhou Haoran, this is all a piece of cake.

Bank transfer, how much information is that?

If all banks in the country were combined, could there be 1 million transfers per day?

How difficult is this?

Finally, the expert group even suggested that if all else failed, they should ask IBM's technical team to come and help.

If this suggestion is adopted.

It's possible that tens of millions of foreign exchange were given to the Americans.

Zhou Haoran felt it was a pity.

China is not yet wealthy and foreign exchange is very precious, but because of the reform of the financial system, it has clung to IBM from the very beginning and has become IBM's ATM for decades.

He didn't know much about the banking industry.

But he understands the internet industry!

Similar things happened in the internet industry in my past life.

Suning was once the largest home appliance retailer in China, but with the rise of e-commerce and the emergence of JD.com, Suning also started its own online business, establishing Suning.com, in an effort to counter JD.com.

Logically speaking, given Suning's size, capital, and strength, it should be able to easily crush JD.com.

In reality, Suning was quickly defeated by JD.com.

Because Suning has partnered with IBM.

Suning purchases the same closed system from IBM as the banking industry, from hardware to system, from software to services... everything is IBM products, which has led to Suning's entire e-commerce business being completely hijacked by IBM.

Even a system upgrade is beyond the capabilities of Suning's technical team, requiring them to bring in a team from IBM.

They paid an astonishing service fee!
The service fees are high, but if they can provide good service, that's one thing. However, IBM's system simply cannot handle the complexities and high-concurrency challenges of the domestic e-commerce market.

This caused Suning's e-commerce platform to crash repeatedly.

JD.com was originally a laughing stock in China's internet industry, a bunch of unskilled, low-tech companies. But unexpectedly, thanks to the contrast with its competitors, Suning destroyed itself... JD.com established itself in the home appliance industry and quickly expanded into other categories, eventually becoming a giant in the market.

However, the domestic banking system has been bound by IBM's closed system for decades.

Just like many people who want to change their phone number but can't.

All kinds of information are tied together. The migration cost is unbearable.

Fortunately, products like WeChat Pay and Alipay are privately owned.

Capitalists have relieved many burdens on the domestic financial system and assumed many social responsibilities.

If all of these were state-owned enterprises operating on IBM equipment, the frequency and concurrency of WeChat Pay would surely cause it to crash in no time.

For decades afterward, IBM remained a leading technology giant, standing at the pinnacle of the world.

Because IBM provides excellent service.

What kind of service?

Financial services.

Decades of accumulation have allowed IBM to effectively control the global financial industry, including in China. The banking sector, in particular, relies heavily on IBM equipment worldwide… They can't switch even if they wanted to. These incredibly wealthy financial institutions have to continuously spend huge sums of money each year to purchase IBM products and services.

The internet was already hijacked by IBM.

Later, tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft stood up to resist.

Domestically, Alibaba also stepped forward and fired the first shot.

Relying on the interactive logic and distributed algorithm support of the Internet, it quickly broke free from the control of "IOE".

Once they embraced the freedom of the internet, they took off unstoppably.

As an internet professional, Zhou Haoran naturally kept his distance from IBM.

I feel uneasy about the current closeness to the expert group.

I left with Dean Cheng.

Zhou Haoran was still indignant, "This foreign exchange was such a waste!"

Dean Cheng frowned. "Can you solve this?"

Zhou Haoran said, "The internet's interaction protocol communicates information through a 'handshake'."

Dean Cheng said, "Didn't Professor Xu say that the handshake agreement has loopholes?"

"So what if there are vulnerabilities?" Zhou Haoran felt that wasn't a valid reason. "This is an intranet, not connected to the outside world. Unless there's a hacker inside, what can they do even if there are vulnerabilities?"

Dean Cheng said, "We also need to take precautions internally."

Zhou Haoran drove him back to school, shaking his head as he said, "Dean, I have a new paper that includes a section on handshake protocols. The current handshake protocol is indeed not good enough, and I have proposed a more efficient and secure method. Once the paper is published, the Internet protocol will probably be revised very soon."

"Can it be solved?"

Dean Cheng was somewhat surprised.

Zhou Haoran said confidently, "These are all very easy things. Normally, a three-way handshake is enough. If there are still hidden dangers in single transmission, we can use a matrix structure for information transmission."

"What matrix form?"

Dean Cheng had no idea about these advanced internet logics, but fortunately, he was also a computer expert and understood them immediately.

Zhou Haoran succinctly stated: "It's like when I'm talking to you, I might say something wrong, and you might misunderstand. This is the hidden danger in the current internal information sharing within banks."

"That's the idea. Banks deal with money, so there's no room for the slightest carelessness!"

Dean Cheng looked very serious.

Zhou Haoran said, "If there were a hundred or a thousand Zhou Haorans talking to a hundred or a thousand Dean Chengs, an interaction matrix would be formed. Even if one or two of them misspoke, or one or two of them misheard, the 99.99% of the information transmission would still be correct. We could make a 100% confirmation based on probability."

"what?"

Dean Cheng opened his eyes wide.

“When you encounter a problem, you solve it,” Zhou Haoran sighed. “You can’t just make up for it with equipment if you don’t have the technology, or make up for it with hardware if you don’t have the technology.”

Just like some mobile phones, which boast about their high-end configurations at launch events; and some cars, which boast about their excellent configurations.

With the right technology, even low-end configurations can provide the same smooth performance and security.

Dean Cheng pondered for a moment and said, "What you said does make sense."

Zhou Haoran said, "It makes sense. This is definitely an inevitable trend. IBM... and Oracle, etc., have set their product prices so high. A mainframe costs tens of millions of dollars. Why? The new technological trend will definitely replace these old-established tech giants."

The principle he was talking about is actually the main idea behind moving away from "IOE" (IBM, Oracle, EMC).

Replace expensive and sophisticated equipment with inexpensive domestically produced equipment.

But what if inexpensive equipment is prone to malfunction and instability?
That would have to be a matrix mode.

A cloud computing server cluster has hundreds of thousands of inexpensive servers... Some may break down, malfunction, or have errors in information transmission, but this has no impact whatsoever; probability theory can provide a conclusion.

99.9999999% is equal to 100%.

Unfortunately, Dean Cheng is not an expert in this field.

Or rather, there are currently no internet experts in China.

"Haoran, you are too young."

Dean Cheng sighed.

Zhou Haoran hummed in agreement and sighed, "I have the strength but can't use it!"

Dean Cheng said, "That's not necessarily true."

"Ok?"

"I'm in charge of my own territory."

"What do you mean?"

Zhou Haoran turned to look at him.

Dean Cheng gave him tremendous support, saying with a smile, "We have limited say in these kinds of large-scale national projects. But at Fudan University, we can say what's what in the field of electronic information."

"University?"

Zhou Haoran raised his eyebrows.

Dean Cheng said, "If you really have the ability, then first make Fudan University a model project!"

(End of this chapter)