Tuesday was the first day of online school in Taipei and New Taipei. Things got off to a bumpy start, with many students unable to log in due to heavy traffic on the servers. Taipei City’s virtual learning platform, called CooC-Cloud, was overwhelmed with more than 2 million login requests, frustrating many students and their parents.

Open up this cloud-based learning system, enter the password and get ready for a long wait. The system was so unresponsive, this student couldn’t join any of her classes.

Junior-high school student
It’s very hard to use, very troublesome. Other schools are using Google Meet, and they’ve taken two classes on there already. But we have been unable to go to class on CooC-Cloud.

Swap out the laptop for a tablet, and this student still can’t log in. Some teachers ditched the CooC-Cloud platform entirely, opting to use commercial videochat software. For parents, the intractable CooC was no small source of frustration.

Parent
Other parents were asking over Line whether anyone had been able to go on, or whether anyone one had found ways in. We’ve all been trying but so far, nobody has successfully logged in.

At a press conference on Monday, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je had promoted CooC-Cloud for online teaching. But on Tuesday, the page was unable to cope with the traffic, leading to huge jams. Taipei’s Department of Education says more than 2 million users tried to use CooC-Cloud, overburdening the servers and causing delays when logging in.

Voice of Chen Su-hui
Taipei Department of Education
We encourage teachers and students to use the educational videos and materials already uploaded to the CooC-Cloud for non-simultaneous learning. Either that, or using other online platforms or resources for classes.

Liu Yao-jen
DPP Taipei councilor
You can’t say that the system was overwhelmed because of a large volume of traffic in a short period and use that as an excuse. I call on Taipei’s Department of Information Technology to step in and offer its assistance to integrate the city’s resources.

Councilors blasted the city government and called for immediate improvement. In response, the Department of Education has sorted the city’s schools by district to establish a rotational system, one that takes turns every four hours to reduce the burden on the system. Taipei’s CooC-Cloud wasn’t the only one with technical issues. New Taipei’s online learning platform had similar setbacks. To address these issues, the main login page has been separated into several authentication pages and users have been asked to use other learning platforms. It’s been a bumpy first day for online learning, and schools say they’ll need more support measures from the government.