Actelis Networks Names Vivek Ragavan as CEO

Actelis Networks named Vivek Ragavan as its new CEO and president. Ragavan has previously served as CEO at Atrica and Redback Networks. Other executive positions held by Ragavan include CEO of Siara Systems, president of the residential broadband group at ADC Telecommunications, and vice president of engineering at General Instrument.


Tuvia Barlev, the long-standing CEO and president at Actelis, will remain active with the company as executive chairman of the board. Barlev co-founded Actelis Networks in 1998, along with current board director Kamran Elahian. http://www.actelis.com

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Cyan Offers Multi-Layer Network Management with 3D Heat Maps

Cyan, a start-up offering multi-layer optical transport system, introduced new tools for improving network planning, operations, performance and revenue opportunities.

CyMS Release 2.3 features three-dimensional "heat maps" which indicate changing network conditions before services are impacted. The three-dimensional representation indicates alarms, configuration-errors, congestion, and even capacity utilization.

Cyan's multi-layer transport platforms modularly combine packet, TDM and optical add / drop multiplexer, cross-connect and transport functionality. The systems can be configured as basic 10G Ethernet, SONET or SDH edge aggregation and add/drop multiplexer systems or modularly scaled when and where needed to enable DWDM with highly advanced multi-layer packet, TDM and optical switching, aggregation and multiplexing both within and between technologies and network layers.



The company said a key advantage of its technology is the ability to provide an integrated and operationally unified view of the multiple virtual layers which comprise the complete network. Scalable networks are fundamentally multi-layer in nature. Each network is comprised of fibers, often located in conduits. Each fiber carries one or more wavelengths and multiple layers of aggregation and transport services operate over each wavelength to deliver a variety of voice, video and data services. Historically, these multiple network layers have been planned, implemented and operated as independent layers.


Release 2.3 of Cyan's multi-layer network management systems goes beyond three-dimensional displays of the various technology layers to provide visual indications of network locations and layers that may be experiencing varying forms of degradation or resource utilization that warrant operator action.


Proactively, the CyMS with multi-layer heat maps provide operators with a visual indication of various network parameters such as capacity utilization of a given service or technology layer at various nodes and spans.
http://www.cyanoptics.com

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Tata Communications Opens Moscow POP

Tata Communications has expanded its global network with the opening of a local Moscow point of presence.


Tata Communications owns and operates one of the world's largest private sub-sea cable networks, enabling it to reach over 1,600 wholesale customers, 10,000 enterprise customers and more than 600 mobile operators. Thisnow includes over 100 service providers in Russia and CIS that are serviced from the Moscow office.


Multiple services from its Moscow location will integrate seamlessly into the company's next generation network and IP/MPLS and Ethernet infrastructure for onward national and regional connectivity. The company's MPLS network reaches 67 countries together with its VNO network that reaches 194 countries.
http://www.tatacommunications.com

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ZTE Supplies IMS Core Network for China Mobile

China Mobile has selected ZTE to supply equipment for an IMS core network. The China Mobile's commercial IMS network will boast 1.4 million lines when it is completed over the next three months.


The IMS network will enable China Mobile to quickly launch fixed/mobile convergence services, such as Converged Centrex, Converged One Number, Multimedia CRBT and Converged Conferencing.


"This is a brand-new beginning of strategic cooperation in next generation core network field between China Mobile and ZTE. Our innovative and complete IMS solution helps China Mobile to provide cutting-edge converged services,expanding its business especially in enterprise market space," said Mr. Wang Xiaoqiang, Vice President of Core Network, ZTE Corporation.
http://www.zte.com.cn

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Accton Selects Xelerated for GigE Fiber Access Products

Taiwan-based Accton Technology Corp. has selected Xelerated's programmable Ethernet switching silicon for new ODM products aimed at the unified fiber access market.


The two companies are bringing to market Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) access switches based on Xelerated's silicon and data plane software with Accton's system level product and production expertise.


Xelerated and Accton are showcasing their first product, a Gigabit Ethernet fiber access switch at this week's Interop show in Las Vegas.


The design provides a service density of 44 GE point-to-point access ports and four 10GE uplink ports in one rack unit space. The data plane is based on Xelerated's unified fiber access software, which supports point-to-point Ethernet, PON and mobile backhaul applications.
http://www.xelerated.com
http://www.accton.com

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Ceragon Networks Report Sharp Revenue Rise for Mobile Backhaul

Ceragon Networks reported record Q1 2010 revenue of $59.7 million, up 36% from $43.9 million for the first quarter of 2009 and up 12% from $53.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. Net income (GAAP) was $3.0 million or $0.09 per basic share and $0.08 per diluted share, compared to net income of $0.2 million in the first quarter of 2009, or $0.01 per basic and diluted share.


Ceragon supplies high-capacity, LTE/4G-ready wireless backhaul equipment.


Geographic breakdown of revenue:


EMEA -- 23%

North America -- 21%

Asia Pacific -- 53%

Latin America -- 3%


"The year is off to a very strong start in part because we were able to recognize revenue from some turnkey projects earlier than originally expected," said Ira Palti, President and CEO of Ceragon. http://www.ceragon.com/

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TI joins HomeGrid Forum's Board

Texas Instruments has joined the HomeGrid Forum board of directors to contribute to this worldwide standardization effort through the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU-T) G.hn organization.


ITU-T recently commissioned G.hnem, a new project within G.hn, intended to address the home networking, electric vehicle communications and grid access aspects of energy management. G.hnem will look to learn from existing Low Frequency Narrowband OFDM (LF NB OFDM) technologies.


"AMI, home networking and electric vehicle communications are critical smart grid applications, and low frequency narrowband PLC is essential to not only enabling the technologies, but also to realizing their full benefits. Texas Instruments will bring extensive experience from its involvement in the leading European PLC initiatives, PRIME and G3, to the G.hnem effort," said Emmanuel Sambuis, general manager for TI's metering business. "To eliminate fragmentation in the industry, TI sees HomeGrid and ITU-T as essential partners with other standards organizations, and together we will help achieve worldwide harmonization that will drive low cost, low power dissipation and high-reliability for smart grid solutions."


"G.hn and G.hnem have the ability to connect hundreds of end products in and outside of the home, allowing manufacturers and service providers to overcome traditional challenges while enabling new functionality," said Matthew Theall, president, HomeGrid Forum.
http://www.ti.com/smartmetering-hgfhttp://www.homegridforum.org

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Extreme Networks Posts Revenue of $78 Million

Extreme Networks reported quarterly revenue of $78.2 million, which was in line with company guidance, and compares to revenue of $79.4 million in the previous quarter and $77.2 million in the third quarter of last year. Net income on a GAAP basis was $3.7 million or $0.04 per diluted share, which included a restructuring charge of $0.4 million and a charge of approximately $1.4 million related to stock based compensation. That compares to a net loss of $1.4 million or $0.02 per diluted share in the previous quarter, and a net loss of $2.2 million or $0.02 per diluted share for the same period last year.


"Third quarter revenue reflected solid performance in North America, where product revenue increased 30% from the second quarter, reversing a historic pattern of sequential revenue declines as we executed to our target for the quarter," said Bob L. Corey, CFO and acting President & CEO of Extreme Networks. "We also posted positive net income and grew revenue-per-employee to the highest level since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008.
http://www.extremenetworks.com

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Verizon: No Record of Traffic Blocking in U.S.

In an FCC filing, Verizon argues that no new U.S. government regulations are needed to ensure an open Internet. Based on the public record of comments and testimony amassed by the FCC during its Open Internet regulatory proceeding, there is no evidence or pattern of blocking access to websites, anti-competitive discrimination, or any other harmful behavior by U.S. broadband Internet access providers.


Verizon believes that no evidence has emerged of a failure in the marketplace that would justify sweeping Internet regulations.


"The Internet has historically been governed largely through the efforts of the Internet community in the form of technical standards bodies and other self-regulatory measures such as the development of industry best practices," Verizon told the commission. "That model should be built upon by creating additional technical and industry groups with the requisite technical expertise that can address problems that do arise, develop industry best practices, and provide a forum to help resolve disputes, much as the Better Business Bureau oversees an alternative dispute resolution mechanism [concerning advertising]."


To guard against potential bad actors in the Internet sector, Verizon said government should address "demonstrated harm to users or to competition on a swift and surgical basis based on an 'ex post' finding of specific facts involved in a particular incident where industry mechanisms are unable to resolve the conduct at issue."


Verizon said the Internet has thrived "because successive administrations of both parties have resisted the urge to regulate."http://www.verizon.com

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Brocade Tunes its Application Broker for Virtualized Data Centers

Brocade released new software for its Application Resource Broker that provides visibility into application performance across a data center and related network and virtual machine (VM) infrastructures. The goal it to help ensure application service level agreements (SLA) are met by dynamically allocating additional resources to service increases in application load. The Brocade Application Resource Broker offers monitoring, decision-making and application-centric reporting features delivered as a plug-in for the VMware vSphere administrative interface. This VMware plug-in can determine in real-time if application resources are meeting user demand. Using its policy-based decision engine, the Application Resource Broker can log events and alert administrators to potentially inadequate application resources. Using those same policies, it can automatically provision additional application VM instances and application delivery controller resources to service user demand, and de-provision the VM instances and resources when demand subsides.


Brocade also unveiled a new ServerIron ADX 1008-1 model, adding an entry-level platform to the ServerIron ADX 1000 Series. The Brocade ServerIron ADX 1000 Series features software-enabled capacity on-demand that doubles or quadruples device performance without hardware upgrades. Brocade also introduced a software release that enables IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway functionality for application delivery to IPv6 clients, Layer 7 switching and application delivery services for the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol, and predictive load balancing functionality based on real-time application performance measurements.
http://www.brocade.com

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Allied Telesis Shows Stackable, Eco-Friendly Access Switches

Allied Telesis
introduced its AT-8100 Series of stackable, access edge switches with energy-efficiency features.


The AT-8100 Series combines advanced layer 2+ and basic layer 3 features with a range of connectivity options from copper to fiber. The switches support the latest security features required at the edge of the network and is designed to interoperate with Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP). Various models offer 24- and 48-port Fast Ethernet stackable platforms with PoE and non-PoE ports. All PoE ports support the IEEE 802.3at (PoE+) 30W standard, which enables their use in video surveillance and/or other outdoor connectivity applications. Dual fixed redundant power supplies, a first for this class of product, come as standard on all but the smallest model.


Allied Telesis emphasized the power efficiency of its new series, saying the platform were designed now only to reduce energy across idle links, but to reduce energy consumption in other areas -- such as power supplies -- not covered by the latest Ethernet standards.


"Reducing power consumption and thermal footprint was a major consideration in the development of this product line," said Dael Bartlett, product strategy and marketing director, Allied Telesis. "Energy efficiency combined with access security and support for next-generation protocols such as IPv6 are critical to sustainable systems for the office, classroom, or factory floor. We are excited about the result because we have achieved significant power savings."http://www.allied-telesis.comhttp://

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Allied Telesis Debuts Core SwitchBlade

Allied Telesis introduced its SwitchBlade 6000S Series family of multilayer switches for core networks.


The chassis-based platform, which is designed for large enterprise and service-provider networks, provides the ability to scale to terabit switching capacity in a modular fashion. Separate modules are dedicated to both device management and packet processing. With this architecture, the packet forwarding engine is implemented in common switching control unit. Multiple switching modes are thus possible.


Allied Telesis said that it designed this platform especially for networks migrating from IPv4 to IPv6, and for where hybrid topologies are required. In addition, the SwitchBlade 6000S Series supports virtual routing functionality (VRF) to enable distinct networks to work together as one system. For example, in the case of a merger or acquisition, this chassis can map two networks seamlessly despite overlapping Internet protocol (IP) addresses.


"The SwitchBlade 6000S Series is the next step in our evolution as a conscientious innovator responding to the needs of our customers," said Dael Bartlett, product strategy and marketing director, Allied Telesis. "We have always had a strong set of solutions at the edge of the network, and the introduction of the Switchblade 6000S Series adds to the network core the same level of reliability and capabilities our customers have experienced in our access and aggregation devices."


The base chassis systems are available in three sizes, providing the appropriate port density and bandwidth depending on specific customer requirements.
http://www.alliedtelesis.com

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Netronome Accelerates L2-L7 Packet and Flow Processing

Netronome introduced its Network Flow Engine (NFE-3240) family of PCIe 2.0 acceleration cards for providing line-rate programmable L2-L7 packet and flow processing. The cards are designed for use by network and security appliances that require high performance and low latency, as well as highly-virtualized multicore servers.


The NFE-3240 acceleration cards are powered by Netronome's 40 Gbps NFP-3240 network flow processor and are available with two 10-gigabit Ethernet or six 1-gigabit Ethernet ports.


Netronome calculates that its NFE-3240 delivers a 10 times performance increase over standard network interface cards in x86-based appliances and servers. Several techniques are used to improve network I/O workloads, including packet classification, stateful flow analysis, deep packet inspection, integrated security processing and dynamic load balancing of flows across a virtualized PCIe datapath to multiple x86 CPU cores.


The company said its NFE-3240 is ideal for line-rate packet capture or inline applications requiring zero packet loss and low latency. Linux-based applications benefit from a heterogeneous multicore architecture that couples the application processing power of multicore x86 with the high-throughput networking capabilities of the NFE-3240. The heterogeneous multicore architecture allows the NFE-3240 to remove networking workloads that degrade x86 performance, enabling the x86 to provide more resources to application and control plane processing. Benefits of the NFE-3240 include:

• Programmable L2-L7 flow processing -- offering 1,800 instructions per packet at 30 million packets per second, delivered by 40 multithreaded, RISC microengine cores running at 1.4 GHz.



• Line-rate networking performance -- for packet capture, flow processing and deep packet inspection across all packet sizes.



• Integrated security processing -- for 20 Gbps of line-rate cryptography and 20 thousand PKI operations per second.



• Enhanced IOV support -- offering bandwidth guarantees and traffic isolation, with extremely low latency, to over two thousand x86 endpoints and other networking devices.



• Comprehensive development tools -- including easy-to-integrate C-based APIs or a fully integrated development environment that includes a C-compiler, powerful simulation environment, extensive software libraries and sample applications.



• Energy efficient design -- offering energy savings from the industry's highest BIPs (billion instructions per second) per watt, providing over 70 percent reduction in power consumption over existing designs.

"Internet traffic continues to rise at dramatic rates and manufacturers of network and security appliances aim to keep pace, while offering greater levels of intelligence," said Niel Viljoen, founder and CEO of Netronome. "Combining the NFE-3240 with multicore x86 processors, designers can scale their applications to 40 Gbps and beyond while maintaining the benefits of standard x86 systems."http://www.netronome.com

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Two Minute Video -- Network Acceleration with Heterogeneous Multicore Processing

Presented by Daniel Proch, Netronome
http://www.netronome.com

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FCC Recommends Public Safety Network Leverage Commercial Rollouts

The FCC issued a detailed report recommending that the public safety network for first responders that is called for in the National Broadband Report be built alongside next gen commercial networks rather than as separate infrastructure. This approach would cost approximately $6.5 billion over 10 years, significantly less than the projected $15.7 billion in capital costs associated with building a stand-alone public safety network.


In addition, the FCC's analysis indicates that to build and operate a stand-alone public safety network would be substantially more expensive than a network constructed under the FCC's recommended incentive-based approach. The study projects $12 to $16 billion in network costs for upgrades and operations within the first 10 years of the network's existence, while the cost for a stand-alone public safety network over the same 10-year period is projected at $25 billion.


"It is vitally important that we move forward with our plan to solve the public safety communications crisis that was exposed on 9/11 and during hurricanes Katrina and Rita," said Jamie Barnett, Chief of the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.
http://www.fcc.gov

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FCC Establishes New Emergency Response Interoperability Center

The FCC has established a new Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) under the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) with the mission of promoting nationwide operability and interoperability in
wireless broadband communications for America's first responders.


Operating under the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB), ERIC will work closely with industry, commercial providers, manufacturers and standards setting groups to ensure interoperability and operability on the new network.


The FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan recommended a framework to create a nationwide interoperable wireless broadband network for public safety. ERIC's mission is to adopt and implement:

• Technical requirements and procedures for ensuring a nationwide level of interoperability;



• Mechanisms to address operability, roaming, priority access, gateway functions and interfaces, and interconnectivity of public safety broadband wireless networks; and



• Authentication and encryption requirements for common public safety broadband
  applications and network usage.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be instrumental in the functions of the ERIC.http://http://

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Ericsson's Q1: Network Sales Decline as Global Services Rises

Ericsson's Group sales in Q1 2010 declined 9% year-over-year with lower sales in Networks but with an increase of 3% year-over-year in Global Services. Sales for comparable units, adjusted for currency exchange rate effects and hedging, declined -16% year-over-year. Gross margin, excluding restructuring, improved year-over-year to 39% (36%) due to efficiency gains and product mix.


Ericsson's share in earnings of joint ventures, before tax, amounted to SEK -0.3 (-2.2) b. excluding restructuring charges, compared to SEK -0.4 b. in the fourth quarter. Sequentially, Sony Ericsson improved sales and margins significantly due to efficiency programs and new products, while ST-Ericsson's loss increased mainly due to lower sales and seasonality. Restructuring charges in joint ventures were SEK 0.1 b in the quarter.


Some highlights for the quarter:

• Networks' sales in the quarter declined by -14% year-over-year, positively impacted by CDMA sales.
  However, tight industry component supply conditions affected sales in the quarter. This was more than
  offset by the acquired CDMA operations.
  
  
• Voice related sales, such as 2G access and core continued to decline. Increased mobile broadband
  (3G) sales, including radio, mobile backhaul and packet core, partly offset this impact.
  
  
• Global Services sales grew 3% year-over-year and declined -22% sequentially. Professional Services sales
  increased 4% year-over-year and in local currencies growth amounted to 12% year-over-year. Managed
  Services sales in the quarter increased by 17% year-over-year.
  
  
• Network Rollout sales increased 3% year-over-year.
  
  
• There is a continued good demand for services targeting the operational efficiency of operators, such
  as managed services, systems integration and consulting. Services related to 2G voice sales
  developed unfavorably.
  
  
• Multimedia sales in the quarter decreased by -29% year-over-year and -31% sequentially, due to continued
  slower sales of revenue management solutions in regions Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and South
  East Asia and Oceania. Sales in multimedia brokering (IPX) were also somewhat slower.
  The TV business continued to show good development with strong demand for compression technology and
  IPTV solutions.
  
  
• Sony-Ericsson shipped 10.5 million units in the quarter, a decrease of 28% year-over-year. Sales in the quarter were EUR 1,405 million, a decrease of 19% year-over- year.
  
  
• ST-Ericsson's net sales in the quarter showed a -18% decrease sequentially, due to the impact of the ongoing
  portfolio transition, to seasonal effects as well as the number of days in the quarter.

Market Observations and Milestones

• Global mobile data traffic has surpassed voice traffic.



• In addition, 3G/WCDMA traffic has surpassed GSM traffic.



• Ericsson's findings show that mobile data traffic globally grew 280% during the last two years
  and is forecast to double annually over the next five years. The data traffic growth is contributing to
  operator revenue growth as more and more consumers use data traffic generating devices, such
  as smartphones and laptops.



• Mobile subscriptions grew by 184 million in the quarter to a total of 4.8 billion, returning to higher growth levels.



• Global mobile penetration is now 70%.



• China and India alone accounted for 44% of net mobile additions in Q1 2010 with 28 and
  53 million respectively.



• The global number of new WCDMA subscriptions grew by 39 million in the quarter to a total of 490 million, of
  which 225 million are estimated to be HSPA. In the fourth quarter 2009, fixed broadband connections
  grew to 457 million, adding 19 million subscribers.

http://www.ericsson.com

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SES-1 Successfully Launched from Kazakhstan

SES-1, a hybrid C- and Ku-band spacecraft that will provide coverage over the United States, was successfully roared into space on board a Proton Breeze M booster from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation and is owned an operated by SES WORLD SKIES. The spacecraft is poised to be the 42nd satellite in SES' global fleet.


The spacecraft carries 24 active C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders of 36 MHz capacity each. Six of the channels in each band can be cross-strapped to the opposite band, enabling new service capability.
http://www.ses.com

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Equinix Opens Second IBX Data Center in Amsterdam

Equinix is ready to open its new Amsterdam (AM2) International Business Exchange (IBX) data center, which has been under development since November 2009. The first phase represents an expected investment of approximately $40.0 million and provides 480 cabinets equivalents. The second phase is targeted for completion during the third quarter of 2010 and is expected to provide an additional 520 cabinets equivalents. A third phase, to be timed to meet market demand, will provide an additional 500 cabinet equivalents.


Equinix noted that its new AM2 IBX data center represents its fourth facility in The Netherlands, including two IBX data centers located in Enschede and Zwolle, and is part of the company's $2.0 billion investment to expand operations between 2007 and 2010.
http://www.equinix.com

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Voltaire Enables Virtualized 10 GbE Data Center Fabric

At this week's Interop in Las Vegas, Voltaire will demonstrate the industry's first end-to-end, virtualized, scale-out data center across a multi-vendor 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric.


In the demonstration, Voltaire's recently introduced Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) 3.0 software orchestrates physical and virtual switches delivering guaranteed levels of service per application. The demonstration will include 10 GbE networking products from Voltaire, BLADE Network Technologies, HP ProCurve, Intel and Emulex, and virtualization software from VMware.


Specifically, the demonstration includes the Voltaire Vantage 8500, a low latency 10 GbE Layer 2 core switch, which provides CEE capabilities such as lossless traffic, as well as the BLADE RackSwitch G8124, HP ProCurve 6600-24XG switch, Intel Ethernet Server Adapter X520-DA2, Emulex OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs), and VMware ESX 4.0. The converged fabric also tunnels storage traffic over 10GbE with virtualized connectivity to Fibre Channel storage.


"The dynamic and shared nature of today's virtualized data center and cloud computing environments is creating new challenges in maintaining security and service levels," said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. "Resolving these challenges requires a new kind of fabric orchestration solution that translates service or application requirements to data center fabric policies in real-time. Voltaire's UFM software for Ethernet essentially functions as the data center fabric operating system and automatically configures fabric resources as services are added or mobilized across the data center."http://www.voltaire.com

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